Was anyone demanding a Willy Wonka origin story? I have the belief that a remake should only be done if the remake is either A) not really a beloved classic and B) gives itself a reason to exist. The new family-friendly musical Wonka certainly does “B” right by digging into the backstory of the character played famously by Gene Wilder and infamously by Johnny Depp. As for “A,” well, while Wilder’s movie was not one of my childhood favorites (it scared the crap out of me to be honest), it is highly beloved by a lot of people for a very good reason. I did, however, see one reason to check out this new movie: writer/director Paul King did pull off two excellent movies based on Paddington Bear.
If nothing else, I figured King would pull off something sweet with a unique aesthetic.
Young Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet), magician and chocolate maker, is returning from years of travel abroad, searching for the best ingredients to make the world’s best chocolate. He doesn’t really have any money, just the clothes on his back, a cane, and a suitcase full of the stuff he makes the chocolate from. He has two problems, the first being a chocolate cartel led by Mr. Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Mr. Prodnose (Matt Lucas), and Mr. Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton), who routinely bribe city officials like the Chief of Police (Keegan-Michael Key) with all the chocolate they can eat, have basically set it up so someone like Wonka with superior chocolate can’t quite even open up a shop. Meanwhile, Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman) and her partner Bleacher (Tom Davis) have tricked the illiterate Wonka into signing a contract for one night her boarding room that he can’t quite hope to pay, condemning him to work in her laundry for the next few years at the least.
However, Wonka isn’t one to give up on his dream, and he soon recruits Scrubitt and Bleacher’s other victims–accountant Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), plumber Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), failed comedian Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher), telephone operator Lottie Belt (Rakhee Thakrar), and orphaned child Noodle (Calah Lane)–are soon helping Wonka out, Noodle especially. What Wonka lacks in resources, he makes up for with clever ideas. But then there’s Lofty (Hugh Grant), an Oompa-Loompa who claims Wonka owes his people a lot of chocolate after Wonka took some oversized cocoa beans from their island home. Lofty isn’t really an ally, but the others know a lot about how things work in this unnamed city. Will it be enough for Wonka to achieve his dreams?
There’s a lot to like about Wonka. Yes, the best songs are the ones that are recycled (with new lyrics) from the Gene Wilder version, but none of them are bad. King does bring his form of family-friendly whimsy.to the screen, and Wonka and his allies are as easy to root for as Wonka’s various adversaries are the right kind of cartoonishly evil that would be needed for a Roald Dalh adaptation. There aren’t really any bad performances here, and Chalamet makes for a nice protagonist, but I’ll give special notice to Colman, who seems more like a Dahl villain than any of the others in a most deliciously evil performance, and Grant, who if he weren’t the only real Oompa-Loompa in the movie (at least with any lines), almost seems like he came over from another movie. It actually hasn’t been a bad year for Grant between this, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Even in that last one that I didn’t like very much, I liked him in it.
That said, there’s something about Wonka that feels a little off somehow. I couldn’t put my finger on it for the first half or so of the movie while I watched it, but then it hit me: Chalamet’s Willy Wonka is too nice. This Wonka doesn’t seem like the type to shrug it off when (admittedly awful) children are sent off to possibly die later in life. Both Wilder and Depp’s Wonkas are not exactly cuddly figures in many ways. Yes, part of it is a test, but that was a Wonka who played dangerous games with children, and that’s a dark side that just isn’t present in this movie’s Wonka. Willy Wonka isn’t really the character to use to tell a story with a sweet message. I’m not sure any Roald Dahl character is, truth be told. Dahl’s work is often noted for its dark side, and this movie, well…it doesn’t really have one. It’s still a good enough movie, but I don’t see how this Wonka would grow up to become the one from either the Wilder or Depp movies.
Grade: B
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