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When writing about The French Dispatch I accused it of being the most Wes Andersony film a Wes Anderson film could ever be. Well, I think I might just have been proved wrong.

Anderson’s new movie, following only months after Asteroid City, is so clearly his work as to almost be self parody. In fact, in leaning into one of his most distinct traits, that of having his actors deliver straight faced narrative monologues to camera, it feels like a stripped down pure shot of slow release Anderson pumped straight into your frontal lobe.

Still though, if there were any of his regular tricks he was going to rely on so heavily it was this one and rather than feeling overly busy as some of his movies can, French Dispatch being an example, this is more gently paced. It is literally like having someone (or four someones with Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley delivering the bulk of the script) spinning you an elaborate yarn. Seriously, the set moves more than the actors. As such these extended speeches don’t wander as we have sometimes seen them do under Anderson’s eye and rather than distracting from the plot, they are the plot. This is like Wes Anderson does Jackanory and it turns out that’s a good thing.

Crucially, none of these orations outstay their welcome. In fact this is barely a film at all, not in the typical sense. The Screen Actors Guild defines a feature length movies as needing to be a minimum of eighty minutes long and the The Academy only forty. Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, streaming on Netflix now, is thirty seven. Anderson has already adapted three other tales from the same anthology, each under twenty minutes, and once they are out in the next few days they will collectively serve as a little TV series rather than the anthology movie they could so easily have been.

That anthology of course is the most famous of Roald Dahl’s more adult books and as such the directors voice is not the only one here. Anderson has done Dahl before with Fantastic Mr. Fox and the two combine nicely once again. This is definitely more in the mode of the quirky American than the lickswishy biffsquiggling Welshman but while it is an uneven combination it is an effective one. There is certainly a clear element of Dahl in the film and in one of the characters.

In making a short TV film, albeit in his very particular style, Anderson has done something both the same, as is his wont, yet different so I guess we can see that as some sort of new direction for him and all in all it works. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar has an undeniable charm and apart from anything else (because there almost isn’t anything else) it tells a great story.

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The Ripley Factor

Here’s the thing; there are no women in the central cast of this film. There are a few in the background but the only time any kind of female really features it is Benedict Cumberbatch in a dress.

There is nothing sexist here though, it’s just a male centred film. Arguably Anderson could have gender swapped some of Dahl’s players but that is a change he wasn’t going to make.

Still, if you want strong female characters from the world of Roald Dahl, Netflix have got you covered elsewhere.