Wonka is a fizzy, exciting, tuneful delight. It mostly retcons the books, but it’s a fizzy, exciting, tuneful delight.
This Willy Wonka is a young, confident upstart trying to launch his chocolate business in the unnamed capitol of chocolate-making, but he doesn’t reckon on the long-established and ruthlessly corrupt chocolate cartel of Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber. He also doesn’t read the fine print when he checks into a boardinghouse owned by a Mrs. Scrubitt, which turns out to be a Hotel California kind of situation (“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”). Wonka is charged with working off his debt in the laundry.
Still, Wonka finds a way to make and sell his chocolates despite numerous attempts by the cartel to sabotage his efforts. He’s ably assisted by Noodle, a girl in the boardinghouse, and his fellow laundry workers, one of whom, intriguingly enough, used to work for Slugworth and knows all kinds of juicy information that may be helpful down the line. There’s also a very persistent Oompa Loompa who keeps stealing Wonka’s chocolates, but even he may be helpful in a pinch.
Wonka sources more from 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory than the books, especially when it comes to the look and sound of our rogue Oompa Loompa, but it’s more innocent and enchanting than that movie ever was, not to mention Timothee Chalamet is a perfect Wonka. He’s lithe, whimsical, full of surprises, and his look is exactly right for this role.
One of the best things about Wonka is that it’s just plain and simple fun. No agenda, no coarse humor, and it has an unfailing sense of optimism. Even the evil characters are humorously sinister, like Mrs. Scrubitt making eyes at her henchman, Mr. Bleach when he shows up at the front desk in a pair of very short, tight lederhosen.
Everything that happens, no matter how zany, is expected and normal, because this isn’t the real world. It draws the viewer in and we don’t want to leave. At my screening, the movie unfortunately shut down four times because the theater was testing their fire alarm system. Even so, no one left, although a collective groan could be heard each time the film cut out.
Now, seeing as nothing’s perfect, there is a wee bit of shark-jumping now and then. Well, the movie doesn’t need to jump the shark. Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa does plenty of jumping all by his lonesome, and his occasional flights of song are vaguely disturbing and hilarious. He’s the reason I didn’t have high hopes for Wonka; it doesn’t bode well when Hugh Grant as a circa-1971 Oompa Loompa is talking to Wonka from under what seems to be a bell jar.
I’d really like to go into more detail about the retconning as well, but it would require too many spoilers. Let’s just say Wonka’s going to have to find a different reason for shutting up his factory and disappearing from the public eye, and I’m hoping Paul King and everyone else can provide that answer some day.
Wonka is currently in theaters. Rated PG.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Gustave Die, Murray McArthur, Paul G. Raymond, Bertie Caplan, Isy Suttie, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Matilda Tucker, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman, Calah Lane, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Freya Parker, Keegan Michael-Key, Jim Carter, Rakhee Thakrar
Directed by Paul King.
Written by Simon Farnaby, Paul King, and Roald Dahl.