‘Wonka’: A delicious treat
A family-friendly, often-laugh-out-loud whimsical story of dreams coming true, made even more flavorful by a great cast.
Timothée Chalamet as Willy Wonka. | PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Daily TribuneA family-friendly, often-laugh-out-loud whimsical story of dreams coming true, made even more flavorful by a great cast.
Timothée Chalamet as Willy Wonka. | PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Timothée Chalamet proves the cynics wrong in Paul King's musical-comedy Wonka, the surprisingly moving and enjoyable origin story of Roald Dahl's most famous character and the world's most popular fictional chocolatier.
He is effective as the eponymous Wonka. He's got the "young soul" of Gene Wilder's 1971 seminal Willy Wonka, echoing the same eccentricity, pain and suffering, that twinkle in the eye and playful spin of the cane, and, of course, the extreme obsession with chocolate-making.
King (the British director behind the feel-good Paddington movies) teamed up for the second time with Simon Farnaby of Paddington 2 for the script and conjures a purely imagined, Scrumdidilyumptious prequel.
Wonka tells the events before Mr. Wonka built his chocolate factory and eventual collaboration with the Oompa Loompas. The tale begins in 1930s, when a young and naïve Wonka travels to a London-like fictional town to start a chocolate shop in a fancy lifestyle area, the Galeries Gourmet.
His candy inventions, with the most bizarre ingredients — from thunderclouds to giraffe milk to a Russian clown's tears — soon become a big hit with the locals, threatening a powerful Church-protected chocolate cartel composed of the comedic trio of Slugworth (a superb Paterson Joseph), Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) and Prodnose (Matt Lucas).
Not to mention his plans are also thwarted by a greedy innkeeper (Olivia Colman) and his chocolates are often snatched by an uppity Oompa Loompa (a delightful Hugh Grant).
Sweet-natured
While we may not witness a character arc the way Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) did on Coriolanus Snow, it doesn't matter. We can use our own imagination to psychologize why King's generous, ultra-kind Wonka evolved into the intimidating and mercurial celebrity chocolatier with sinister vibes depicted in the book and in the 1971 picture.
Chalamet's sweet-natured Wonka is enough to get a glimpse into the makings of a mad candy-scientist in a world filled with greed. The heart of the film, though, is the friendship between Wonka and Noodle (Calah Lane), a slave-orphan child with whom he shares both the pain of being motherless and the hope of a better future.
Wonka is mildly Dickensian with a touch of Harry Potter set in an eye-candy "Old Hollywood" musical stage. The original songs by Neil Hannon are all delectable, and while the versatile Chalamet is not a powerful singer, he lends the appropriate feelings to his song numbers, including his heartfelt rendition of "Pure Imagination."
The production design and choreography are solid, with South Korean cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon providing some breathtaking lensing, the most memorable being the silhouetted close-up side view of Wonka. Flashbacks are rendered in beautifully textured rotoscope, completing the visual extravaganza of the movie.
Love letter
It's also a love letter to the 1971 original, featuring familiar elements (you can call them easter eggs) from flying people to pennies in storm drains, to crayon-colored faces, a possible Slugworth lineage, and that one scene when Wonka and Noodle are pushed to the top of a circular glass pane, the way Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe got fizzed upwards in the Mel Stuart classic.
The only odd tweak is Wonka being illiterate here. While this seems to be a narrative strategy to prevent Wonka from reading a deceptive contract's fine print for one of the story's conflicts, it's strange that his loving mother (Sally Hawkins) did not care to teach her child the ABCs.
Quite interesting, too, that Wonka's chocolates are akin to drugs, either prescription (hair-grower, confidence-booster, antidepressants and so forth) or recreational, making people "high."
The chocolates here are also being illegally circulated by a cartel and corrupting both the priest (Rowan Atkinson) and the chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key). Still, it's all hilarious.
Wonka, overall, is truly a delicious treat. King combines the allure of magic and chocolate, lovely music, humor and hope in a family-friendly, often-laugh-out-loud whimsical story of dreams coming true, which is made even more flavorful by a great cast. Prepare to shed a tear toward the end.
4 out of 5 stars
now showing in cinemas