Directed by: Paul King
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Written by Anna Harrison
60/100
Raise your hand, please, if you were clamoring for a prequel about the man who put several children through severe trauma in his chocolate factory. Oh, I see—no one? No one was asking for this movie? You didn’t want to be subjected to yet another prequel no one asked for? Rest assured, citizen, you are not alone! I, too, did not give a shit about “Wonka,” Paul King’s prequel to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” (Whether it serves as a prequel to the book, the original movie, or the more recent remake is unclear.) Corporate greed and cowardice has driven Warner Bros. to milk even the deepest cuts in its IP vault, but even if David Zaslav and company run off nothing except puffer vests and Excel sheets, miraculously, “Wonka” manages to cook up something hopeful and without even an ounce of cynicism. A remarkable feat, considering it would not exist without the cynicism of its good corporate overlords.
“Wonka” begins rather like a Charles Dickens novel: our protagonist, Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet), finds himself turned out on the streets of London, forced to rely on the kindness of strangers to eke by as he attempts to build his chocolate empire. He makes his way a boarding house run by Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman), whose apparent selflessness quickly turns sour as Wonka learns that he’s accidentally signed himself away to indentured servitude in exchange for a bed on which to sleep. Still, Wonka finds solace in the other residents, including the orphan Noodle (Calah Lane), who quickly shows a keen eye for business and agrees to help Wonka follow his dream of opening a chocolate shop. Given what happens to the children who later run across Wonka’s path, it wouldn’t be unusual to assume our Noodle would meet an untimely end, yet there is no hint of any darkness in Chalamet’s Wonka. Instead, he is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, even convincing the other unfortunates at Mrs. Scrubitt’s boarding house to pitch in to his adventure and help his marvelous chocolates. (And, of course, he later gets help from Hugh Grant’s marvelously grumpy Oompa Loompa.)
Director Paul King, who put down the reins of “Paddington” to direct this film, brings the same charm and whimsy to “Wonka” as he did his previous two efforts, injecting this cash-grab prequel with a dash of optimism and colorfulness. Unfortunately, he’s let down by Chalamet, who sells the more serious moments—especially the tender scenes with Noodle, who serves as the beating heart of the film—yet proves too self-conscious to commit to the big musical numbers or fantastic aspects of the film. He goes for subtlety, but “Wonka” is not built for subtlety, because it’s a film about a guy with a silly top hat who bursts into song every so often and whose biggest enemies are a group of guys known as the Chocolate Cartel, for God’s sake. Why have we Americans become so obsessed with understatement in acting? Maybe it has something to do with the British tradition of theater and study of acting, instead of skating by on a handful of raw talent, but Chalamet gets swamped by his fellow actors in several (though not all) scenes.
Luckily, the central miscasting is not enough to derail “Wonka,” largely because, well, it’s not that serious. Do I really care if an origin story about Willy Wonka is a piece of great cinema? No, not really. I was still entertained, even if Chalamet won’t be starring in a Sondheim show anytime soon (we can hope). The colors, the gentle humor, the committed performances elsewhere, all make “Wonka” a perfectly passable afternoon movie. While I may not have been in a world of pure imagination, it was still a nice piece of candy.
“Wonka” Trailer
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