So I griped a bit about Asteroid City and how mannered it was, but here’s another Wes Anderson movie that’s even more mannered, but… this time it worked for me.

This is apparently a Roald Dahl story (I’ve never read it), and the movie is less an adaptation and more of a dramatic reading. Like, the characters on the screen seem to be literally reading the text of the story out as they’re acting the scenes, to the point of sometimes turning to the camera with a low “he said” in between their lines of dialogue. The overall feel of it ends up being a kind of a sober, extremely arch version of Drunk History, just a pure narration acted out.

And of course it’s Wes Anderson, so visually it is meticulous and clockworky, but whereas that just felt affected and distancing in Asteroid City, here it gives the story a kind of popup-book vibe, and feels right.

This is basically a trifle (it’s about as long as an episode of television), but it’s an interesting story well-told.