It’s rare that a film adaptation completely lives up to your expectations, but that is just what happened with Wes Anderson’s recent Netflix adaptation of the Roald Dahl book “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”

I remember reading this book as a boy and it appealed to me because it was short. Much the same way the book Henry finds in this story, you can sit and read Dahl’s story in just a half hour or less.
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The story is simple. Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a wealthy man who, upon visiting the home of an acquaintance, stumbles on a book in the library. The book contains an account by an Indian doctor (Dev Patel) of a man who claimed to be able to see without using his eyes (Ben Kingsley). Henry takes the small volume and devotes his life to learning this skill so that he may win at blackjack. When he is successful, he decides to donate his winnings to charity and make it his life’s work to win big at casinos around the world and use his earnings to set up children’s hospitals and orphanages.

Top Notch Talent
While the entire production is top of the line, the cast is where this film really hits it out of the park. Cumberbatch is perfect as the titular Henry Sugar and Kingsley makes a fantastic man who can see without his eyes. All of the actors play multiple roles and Ralph Fiennes shines as Dahl himself, setting up the story from his writing chair and looking rather like the BFG or the pictures you’ll find of the real Dahl in the back of his books.

Simple and Elegant
The actors are trusted to deliver amazing performances on sets that are often in motion around them, giving the feel of a stage play. Long takes dominate the action and the fact that the entire account is told as a short story is hilarious, yet effective. The actors continuously break the fourth wall, staring directly at the camera and giving asides of “he said” after their own just spoken lines. In just about any other film it would feel out of place, but here it somehow works.
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There is no mistake that this is a Wes Anderson film from the slightly washed out colors to the inventive approach to everything on screen. I have yet to check out the other shorts recently added to Netflix (“The Swan”, “The Rat Catcher”, and “Poison”) but will be checking those out and delivering reviews as soon as I do.
10 out of 10

While the film is now nearly a decade old, some of the annoyances remain, but the film as a whole remains a solid adaptation of excellent source material.

Why The Hobbit novel was distributed across three films is still a mystery to me, but watching this for a second (or maybe third) time, I appreciate the level of detail Jackson includes. It makes more sense to watch this trilogy AFTER the Lord of the Rings trilogy of a decade prior even though the events happen many years before The Lord of the Rings. There are many callbacks to the earlier films, and a few subtle hints to the events that follow in the timeline of Middle Earth, even while the story of Bilbo and the Dwarves is unfolding near Laketown and The Lonely Mountain.

The cast in the film is outstanding, particularly Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular dragon, Smaug. Cast in this role prior to his success in the Marvel films as Dr. Steven Strange, Cumberbatch brings a true menace to the character which can't be understated. Martin Freeman's reprisal of Bilbo from the first film holds the piece together and it is always welcome to see Sir Ian McKellan gracing the screen as Gandalf. A fitting cameo from Cate Blanchett as Lady Galadriel and a strong performance from Luke Evans as Bard of Laketown help bolster this roster. The dwarves themselves tend to blend together as they did in the first film, but Richard Armitage stays strong as their leader Thorin.

The Desolation of Smaug is a stunningly beautiful film, as are all Peter Jackson's films set in Middle Earth. It was true serendipity that Jackson hails from New Zealand, the country probably most analogous to Tolkien's world that we have in our earth. While there are plenty of wonderful vistas, there are also plenty of times when the true beauty of the land is enhanced through technological means. Unfortunately, this often comes at the cost of being compared with The Lord of the Rings, which set the bar so high as to be unreachable by anything else.

The only other place where Desolation of Smaug falls a bit short is in the screenplay. It is too long, and spends too much time making big deals out of small passages (or non-existent ones) from the book. I understand that Jackson was given carte blanche in making these films, but this is one instance where less would probably have been more. I've long argued that these films should have been a duology at most, and the padding included in this installment just speaks even more to that theory.

In the end, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a passable film with good performances from some excellent actors. The choices that bring it down a notch happened well before filming ever started and the filmmakers involved with the production provided their best with the material at their disposal.

7 out of 10​​​​