The cinema’s choc-top range was all out of Snozzberry! 😱 Unscrupulous! 😄 I’ll be honest with you – as this year is closing down, and as I catch up with what I’ve missed, it occurred to me about a week ago that I could skip Wonka in cinemas. If the movie had come out in June, I may’ve, and waited for VOD. I’ve just got this uneasy sensation, that Warner Bros. could’ve decided that while they couldn’t remake Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory again, they did have this brand whose recognition would put bums on seats, and any sludgy river cast on the screen would be enough. We’ve all seen it before – the corporate machine at play seducing the essence of creativity, and I have Oz The Great and Powerful buzzing in my mind. I hope I’m wrong, but as I sit in my cinema chair waiting for perhaps my last cinematic venture of the year to begin, I’m suddenly only excited for the cast, that includes Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Coleman, and Rowan Atkinson. As far as I know, this isn’t even based on anything Roald Dahl wrote (and they wouldn’t dare adapt Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator 😏), so let’s see what the selected individuals have come up with as an origin for Mr. Willy Wonka.
A young Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) arrives from abroad, with dreams of opening a chocolate shop. Little money in his pocket sees that his first night is going to be rough, until a ‘kindly’ stranger offers to take him to a hotel, where Wonka meets an orphan named Noodle (Calah Lane), and some other friends to kickstart his adventure. The chocolate game proves a hard one to crack, for even a miraculous talent like Wonka must overcome an established and scheming competition who have the police on the take, and Willy will have to outsmart the system to make his dreams come true!
Well, my worst fears have been realised. This movie is a bad egg! I would’ve loved to have been the people sitting behind me, so I could laugh at myself constantly taking off my hat to rub my forehead to numb the pain. Allow me to sound like Mark Hamill commenting on Rian Johnson’s Star Wars when I say that I fundamentally disagree with this movie’s interpretation of the character, and the movie’s creative direction taken at nearly every turn. Around the time our cast of characters are all singing “Scrub, Scrub” I thought the movie was detestable, and that’s pretty early on. How much cocaine do you have to take to pitch, “Okay, Willy Wonka is going to sign a contract at a dodgy hotel and bond with the other clothes-washing prisoners” That’s what I want to see in my chocolate movie – contractual servitude and laundry. And I only just realised, that this movie presents the fine print of a contract as nothing but immoral, yet Wonka will employ the same tactic in his contract with Charlie later on, to test Charlie’s loyalty – obviously, between stories, this tactic becomes… good? I said in my opener that I didn’t believe that this movie was based on any previous works, but while watching it, it seems very apparent that this prequel had to have been a stage play first. You can even see exactly where the intermission would be – as the musical number ends with the Chief-of-Police (Keegan-Micheal Key) first depicted in a fat suit, and right before we are finally introduced to the little orange man Lofty (Hugh Grant). But no, to my great surprise, Wonka has been written to be a movie first and foremost, which honestly makes some of the decisions within this movie even more baffling. The movie’s tone is obscene – Wonka really misses the essence of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, or, more probably, doesn’t care to know it. From good old Charlie’s point of view, London is terribly normal, and bleak, which offsets how magical and unbelievable the factory is within. If the outside world is colourful, fantastical, and cartoony already, then Wonka is just a patch in it, and isn’t an uplifting anomaly at all. You could say to me that Wonka has appropriately changed with the times, or perhaps Wonka is a new interpretation, but I’m less likely to buy that when Wonka comes with the Warner Bros. logo and boasts the notes from the original’s musical score every chance it gets. Bladerunner 2049 was able to keep an onus on its predecessor’s atmosphere and develop an excellent story within. Spielberg’s West Side Story went out of its way to recall a simpler era, whilst also including updated values and ideas too. It can be done, for those who want to put in the work, and those that want to put in the work should be the ones assigned the work! This movie may seem out to break stereotypes, but it utilises stereotypical caricatures everywhere – there are varying American and British accents to suit any given sentiment, and against this fake European backdrop, the most egregious is the Chief-of-Police, who appears to be from Brooklyn 😣 The movie oddly never specifies where we are on the map, yet since Wonka shows off his plans to build a factory by the end, and due to other aesthetics, we have to be in London, don’t we? It’s all very weird and unrealistic. Director Paul King has famously written and directed the Paddington movies prior to this, which I haven’t seen, but I believe in my heart to be very well-received – but we meet on poor footing sir, as Wonka is as misguided as I was worried about, and worst still.
And I’ve heard outcries on shows like Masters of the Universe: Revelation and Obi-Wan Kenobi usurping their main draws to introduce smarter diverse characters to be the new heroes of the day, but I hadn’t really experienced it myself. I don’t think Noodle would frustrate me so much, since a child fulfilled a huge component of the original as well after all, if the character of Willy Wonka wasn’t so flat. And we’re here to see him, ain’t we? I can’t recall Wonka given any meaningful character moments (outside reflecting on his mother, I suppose), whereas in the original, Gene Wilder’s Wonka canvas is mischievous, and eccentric, both to the point of exasperated glee and hot anger, while his sharp wit leans him always one step ahead – and I gather all that without him even being the main character of the movie. The only time Chalamet’s Wonka is particularly clever is when he tricks Slughorn (Paterson Joseph) and his cronies into eating the levitating chocolates right at the end. I thought we were going to get a situation where Wonka didn’t care about the fine print in Mrs. Scrubbit’s contract, after being warned(!), because he needed a place to stay and had already deduced a way out of it – instead, no, Wonka can’t even read 🙄 And who taught Noodle to read, by the way? I can’t see Mrs. Scrubbit doing it, can you? And how come Wonka’s loving mother couldn’t teach him to read whilst she was designing the beautiful calligraphy for her chocolate wrappers? Noodle’s ability to be able to read is essential to the story, and I’ve never seen a character trait more incongruent with a backstory, of being an orphan baby to a tyrant 🙄
I’d say this movie also has the Solo: A Star Wars Story problem, whereby it books itself as a prequel to show how Willy became Wonka, but presents him pretty similarly to how he already was before, with all the unexplained miraculous knowledge just existing. I may’ve thought the recent The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had structural problems, but at least it had a handle on something to say about its character in focus – Wonka has an everything problem. If I think about a prequel for Wonka, I think of his life in two stages – one has him setting up his business, and harnessing his love of chocolate, which this movie sort’ve does but in a lazy way; and this option should basically be a manufacturing movie, which isn’t much fun, so we’ll move on. The second idea would come when the factory is already built, but with Wonka unsatiated, and determined to go out and find more exciting innovations, beyond imaginations – and this is the one I would’ve done. Perhaps a close companion, similar to Noodle but a bit older, could think him mad, especially with the threat of spies closing in to steal his already-famous recipes at every turn. But by golly, he finds the magic, and shuts down the factory to protect, while he perfects, what will revolutionise the confectionary industry – I’m basically pitching action, conspiracy, adventure, and wonder, much like what exists in the first Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them movie, and I think that would’ve been better ☺ But instead, this frivolous movie yearns to hack its own path out of the bare minimum of what already exists. This movie turns “Pure Imagination”, which used to be a song about imagination and ingenuity, into a ditty about reuniting an orphan girl with her mother, and who would want that? Who would write that? This movie makes everyone in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory look even more like nitwits because, bro, you shook by lickable wallpaper? You never heard tale of the hover chocolates? Plus, I wonder if Wonka had a hard time explaining to his “business partner” that he gave away his factory to a kid he just met without consulting her. Oh, but it’s the modern day, so I suppose we’ll discover later on that it was all Noodle’s idea to send out the golden tickets, and she’s the one who liked the look of Charlie Bucket from afar, and decided it for Wonka, watching from the walls or something.
Calah Lane, who plays Noodle, is just a theatre kid, but to single her out for being annoying would really be unfair since the entire cast is acting to the rafters, clearly an intention on behalf of the movie. Matthew Baynton as Felix Flickelgruber is reaching so far inside himself to be theatrical that he’s almost inside out. The trailers quite rightly exploit the reality of Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa because it’s funny, especially since his later career has seen him mostly play the sly villain types in Guy Ritchie movies 👍 But the short fellow is only in, I think, four scenes, so don’t get your hopes up for a percentage that reflects anywhere near the promotional material. I also can’t believe veteran actor Jim Carter got dragged into this. Sally Hawkins deserves so much better too. And after taking a liking to Emma Thompson as the Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, and Melissa McCarthy hamming it up as Ursula in The Little Mermaid this year, I cannot extend Olivia Coleman’s villainous lump the same curtesy – leave her out in the cold. Yet as a Little Britain fan from way back, Matt Lucas made me laugh, whenever he wasn’t doing his schtick about murdering people repetitively – so, twice, I think. In fact, the only other actor I’d give a pass for this abomination is Paterson Joseph – he is fantastic, and having a ball with the theatrics of his wickedness. Which means, my dear Chalamet… 😭 Considering Chalamet has made an existence out of brooding in serious movies like Call Me By Your Name, The King and Little Women, a paycheck performance like this has come too soon. It’s a genuine laugh. And somehow, astronomically, I still maintain Chalamet is a worthy choice to play Willy Wonka, but this script just gives him nothing to do, and no moments to shine. Bully for him that he gets to sing and dance though.
Sure, there were a few times where this movie broke my incredulous mood – the Noodle song, “For a Moment”, and the accompanying sequence atop the zoo rooftop with helium balloons was appropriately magical. There’s also the moment where the villainous trio take their bribery song to the point of confetti and a synchronized dance number that was so absurdly preposterous that it became comically entertaining again. And the song along with the Wonka shop’s grand opening was lovely, right before the townsfolk turned on Wonka quicker than jackals. The townsfolk were perfectly happy to go along with his quirks and inventions while they were scrumptious, but as soon as there was a slight inconvenience, they ruined him in a matter of minutes 🙄 Blue hair and girls with mustaches – little do these people realise that in a couple generations their grandkids are going to have the universities full of this 😄 Of course, these lighter moments did offer me an opportunity to jump on board with the fizzy tone, but even as I may’ve tiptoed over to positivity, something lame or destructive would draw me back. I’m aware that the reviews have been kind, but Wonka is a disgrace. At one point Wonka sings that he wanted this to feel familiar like his childhood – you and me both, brother, you and me both. Yet funnily enough, I’ve never considered myself a passionate Wonka-head for the 1971 version, but one’s got to defend the legacy of a classic, don’t they?
I think if this was a play, I wouldn’t hate it so much. A difference of mediums, and without the Warner Bros. logo misleading me, it would’ve been an altered experience. I went into Netflix’s new Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical expecting to hate it earlier this year, but since I was pre-exposed to the show on stage, I’d had time to accept its alternativeness. Yet, even still, Matilda is really different again, because you can see it as an additional version, whereas Wonka is a prequel – and by lore, too much is disrespected and changed. On top of what I’ve already said, this also now means that after Wonka won the day so vividly against Slugworth, by sending him into the ether, Slugworth still manages to squeeze Wonka into apparent isolation, and Wonka’s wonderous ingenuity now shrinks from the likes of hover chocolates to silly old Fudge Mellows and plain Wonka chocolate bars for the years to come. P-lease. Gene Wilder would shudder in his grave! And if I ever write short stories in the tranquility of my garden shed along the back fence, I pray that they never come out of there, in the lengths of avoiding them being turned into this goofy pantomime. It pains me that regular folk will turn up and see this, and think this is a movie. It’s sludge for the lowest common denominator. I’d almost rather listen to FM radio. Prove me wrong, but I think this movie is guaranteed to be lost to the annals of time, and even more deservedly than Mary Poppins Returns. Now I’m looking forward to Chalamet in Dune: Part Two to help steady his career again, so he can fly right and straighten up – hang on, strike that, reverse it.
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