WONKA 🍫🍭 (2023) REVIEW:

With dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers. I would like to open this review by stating that I am not the biggest fan of musicals, so my taste in them as it pertains to musical films are quite… selective. With that being said, Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was one of my favorite movies growing up and still to this day remains very near and dear to my heart. I’d also like to add that I’ve never been too crazy about Tim Burton’s hyper-stylized 2005 remake and always felt it was far too dark and Tim Burton-y for its own good. Fast forward to 2023, and we are treated to a prequel to the original 1971 film detailing how a young yet poor Willy Wonka became the greatest chocolatier the world has ever known. It’s a tall order for anyone to be stepping into Gene Wilder’s shoes and in this case Timothée Chalamet does so with a surprising amount of confidence, youthful spunk, and energetic enthusiasm to bring this younger Wonka to life. Sure, there are times when it does feel like Timothée is explicitly doing a Gene Wilder impersonation, but for the most part he nails the showmanship mannerisms and zany personality traits.

What’s really interesting is how the film shows Wonka as an extremely poor young man with incredibly ambitious dreams of becoming the greatest chocolate maker in the world. He travels on ships to remote islands to collect specific ingredients, carries around a nifty mobile chocolate making machine, and oftentimes imagines in his head how the public would ideally react to his bonkers theatricality. Getting to the top is never easy though, and we actually get to see how Wonka got stuck working in a laundromat basement as a means of having some place to stay. Tom Davis as Bleacher and Olivia Colman as Mrs. Scrubbit are the innkeepers of this laundromat and both treat their unwilling employees with such unhinged cruelty that the audience will love to hate them. There’s even a catchy musical number in which Wonka and the other workers partake while they’re toiling away in the basement. Perhaps the strongest aspect of the film is how Wonka bonds with his newfound friends at the laundromat and seeks to liberate them by making and selling chocolate.

Wonka especially becomes close with a poor little girl in the laundromat named Noodle played by Calah Lane who has never eaten chocolate before in her life. The bond and friendship that grows between Wonka and Noodle is particularly heartwarming, with both of them sharing a somewhat similar past when it comes to their relationships with their mothers. Then there’s the villains, corrupt chocolate cartel leaders Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber played respectively by Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, and Mathew Baynton. All three are complete caricatures of stuck up rich businessmen who even scoff at the mere mention of the word “poor.” They are absolutely cartoonish in the funniest way possible and clearly are reveling in the absurdly pretentious and sleazy nature of their high class characters. The aforementioned performances may be solid, but for me, no one comes close to Hugh Grant as Lofty, an Oompa-Loompa who stalks Wonka as a means of getting even with him for something Wonka did in the past. Grant steals every scene he’s in, playing Lofty like an obsessed leprechaun constantly searching for his pot of gold. The banter between Wonka and Lofty was so hilarious and entertaining which is why it’s unfortunate that Grant’s actual screen time is so limited.

As for the setting and time period, it’s not fully clear although the set design is quite vivacious, giving off a Victorian era Industrial sort of vibe. While the musical numbers are mostly enjoyable, there are maybe one or two too many that throw off the pacing, most notably in the film’s middle portion. I suppose what holds the movie back from being GREAT is that it feels more like a pilot episode of a miniseries than a detailed story of Wonka’s complete rise to fame and glory. While it is touched on a bit, I would have liked to see more of Wonka’s personal life as it relates to his childhood and blossoming friendship with Lofty. There is also seemingly big event in the second act that felt rather rushed and should have been given more time to develop before that section abruptly ended.

The story is fairly predictable and there’s a contrived third act twist that can be seen coming a mile away. It never insults the Willy Wonka mythology nor does it do any unnecessary retconning, so the film is appropriately benign in that regard. To be fair, my expectations going in were so low, almost to the point that I wasn’t going to see the movie, so the fact it gave me a mildly enjoyable experience is enough for me to recommend it as a harmless film for kids and families to see during the winter holidays. Overall, while Paul King’s WONKA lacks the whimsical charm of Mel Stuart’s 1971 classic, this prequel has just enough of a delightfully sugary style and lively performances led by Timothée Chalamet’s charismatic portrayal of a young Willy Wonka along with a standout Hugh Grant as Lofty the Oompa-Loompa to make up for its formulaic shortcomings.