Esio Trot (aka Roald Dahl's Esio Trot)
Dir: Dearbhla Walsh
2015
**
Esio Trot (Tortoise backwards) is one of Roald Dahl's last books to have been published, just a year before his death. Popular with children born after 1990, it is fair to say it's one of his lesser known stories. It is however, unmistakably one of his. It's a sweet and simple story, written with Dahl's typical and unique wit. Being one of the few of Dahl's stories not to have been adapted to film (it was adapted into a play for the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival) it was ripe for the picking and anything Dahl is generally guaranteed success but unfortunately for fans, it fell into the hands of Richard Curtis - Britain's most overrated film maker. Curtis has added pointless characters and horrible new dialogue that doesn't match Dahl's style or wit in the slightest. I love both Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench but the truth is neither of them fitted their parts particularly well, Dustin Hoffman's performance is fine but he often looks like he doesn't want to be there and quite frankly I don't blame him. Nothing really works the way it should, the way it does in the book. The colours vary from garish to bland, indeed the whole production doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be Quentin Blakesque or as far away as possible from the animation so many associate with Dahl's work. My biggest gripe is the woefully pointless narration from one of my least favorite human beings; James Corden. The narrator didn't need to be part of the story, he certainly didn't need to be filmed traveling around London as it was distracting and didn't work at all with the main story. James Corden doesn't even have a particularly great or individual voice - something a narrator should have at the very least. It's a complete mess and a huge disappointment.