Movie Review: ‘Wonka’

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Olivia Colman

Plot: A young Willy Wonka arrives in a new town to fulfil his dream of opening a chocolate shop. When a cabal of chocolatiers plan to drive him out of town, Wonka relies on his craftiness, inventions and friends to push back.

Review: We were feeling pretty cynical going into Wonka. It’s been documented on this site time and time again that I’ve got a distaste for prequels, finding them to brand-driven and shallow explanations of how characters got their props. Coupled that with a creepy, tiny Hugh Grant in the trailers got us on the back foot. Just as the movie started, a few notes from ‘Pure Imagination’ plays, really making us feel that this was going to bank on nostalgia and familiar imagery. The opening musical number wasn’t memorable and the characters were all pretty grotesque. At least we’d brought chocolate with us.

For the most part, we are spared the standard prequel pitfalls of adding undue significance to props the character had (I don’t remember a set of rearview window dice being significant to Han…or even present…in previous films). They’ve also dodged the weird concept of explain where characters got their name (Jack Sparrow and Han, again). Wonka (Chalamet) arrives on our shores a fully formed character. He’s a chocolatier, he’s a mechanical innovator, he’s mastered the slight of hand, and he wears a long purple coat and top hat. He’s an eccentric right off the boat, with the character facing a conflict when he has little power or resources to his name.

Wonka steps off a boat in a…generally European city? In the local mall sits three chocolate shops, the owners of whom are none to pleased to see competition. As the cartel plot to keep Wonka out of business, the man himself has been conned into gruelling laundry work for some deranged innkeepers. He must rely on his ingenuity and the unique skills of his co-workers to get out of his debt to nasty Mrs Scrubbit (Colman), dodge the corrupt police commissioner (Key) and the machinations of the three business rivals (Joseph, Lucas, Baynton) to first market his wares and then open a shop. Oh, and there’s the little orange man who keeps stealing his chocolates.

At the beginning of the movie there’s a heightened sense of magic. We mean this in a literal sense as on two occasions in back to back scenes, Wonka produces teapots, hot chocolate, glass mugs and more from his hat. This felt like an unfamiliar take on the character. This story and performance is clearly built from the performance of Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie adaption of the original novel, but this use of sorcery didn’t fit with our memory of that version. Even stranger, but in a welcome change this gets dropped entirely after the first act. From then on there’s a reliance on mechanical inventions to solve problems and produce chocolate. His mini-carry case chocolate factory is a great prop design that fits with the character. His walking cane takes on a Batman utility-belt type quality where you have to ignore the logic of it…but if that’s going to be the an issue for you, this have not be your jam.

The musical numbers…this is a musical even if the trailer tried to slip that one by you, busy putting the ending of the movie in the trailer instead…range from serviceable to mildly catchy. The song about doing laundry is an immediate earworm. If there’s one misstep Wonka makes, it’s hinging your emotional resolution on a rendition of ‘Pure Imagination’, making this the most memorable musical moment of the film. When the highlight comes from another movie, you’ve shot yourself in the foot. They spin out a version of the ‘Oompa Loompa’ song, but that gets a pass because it’s part of that character behaviour and occurs in universe in a way that the other songs don’t. Easy to understand.

Speaking of Hugh Grant, this was an aspect of the film we weren’t looking forward to. We’ve liked his recent more comedic turns, such as in Dungeons & Dragons, but he just looks weird all shrunk down and orange. He was a big feature of the trailer and we didn’t want to watch this character play a big role. Fortunately, the trailer misrepresented this as he’s one scene short of a cameo. The trailer gave us possibly every scene he features in. His desert dry delivery of the Oompa Loompa dialogue in an adversarial relationship with Wonka his delightful. The contrast of his clownish appearance and the impatient diatribes is fun and does not overstay its welcome.

There’s a couple of notable silly performances among the supporting cast, with Keegan-Michael Key being especially notable. The addict police boss has some of the funniest moment of absurdity and the recurring gag of him ballooning out in size after eating truckloads of chocolate bribes works better than it has any right being. For the younger viewer, my 11 year old expressed strong appreciation for Mr. Bean being chased by a giraffe.

Most of the attention is going to be on Chalamet, Hollywood’s most angular man. He’s extraordinarily suited to leading roles and seems to have been a popular choice to take on this role, that is fondly remembered by most audiences and will come under scrutiny. It feels like Chalamet has found his own way to get the same result as Wilder. He recognises what drives the role instead of focusing on an impersonation of the previous performance. At his heart, Wonka is a showman and that comes through first and foremost.

For the Roald Dahl purists, if there is such a thing, the backstory of the Oompa Loompas has been given a readjustment. A misunderstanding between Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa is eventually resolved with a business arrangement. This replaces the previous version of events in which Wonka transported them to his factory in packing crates and paid them in beans. It’s not a loss to the story, and it isn’t the first change regarding these characters. They were original written as being dark skinned pygmies.

By the end of the movie…we had been charmed by this family friendly, slightly magical tale. It doesn’t step on the originals toes to any egregious degree and largely does it’s own thing.

Rating: SEVEN out of TEN