Based on the previews, I desperately wished to avoid seeing this movie. But my girlfriend's little brother wanted to go, so hey, free popcorn. I was rewarded with a film that is suitably okay and occasionally pretty good.
This is the origin story of Willy Wonka--so beholden to the 1971 version that it reuses its songs, but apparently not intended to be a canonical prequel. This Wonka is kind and magnanimous to a fault, a pure being who only wishes to inspire joy and imagination through his magical confections. It's difficult to imagine this character growing into the cynical, eccentric, and occasionally sadistic recluse Gene Wilder played. Wonka's relationship with the Oompa Loompa (Hugh Grant in a scene-stealing performance) seems carefully constructed to avoid invoking the residue of enslavement that hangs over the novel and its other adaptations. In a way, creating a backstory for a character like Wonka is as foolhardy as trying to set the Joker's origins in stone--he just works better when he's nine-tenths mystery--but the filmmakers establish so firmly early on that they're doing THEIR OWN THING that you never really feel like they're cheapening the classic interpretation of the character by over-explaining him. This is almost more of a parallel universe story, a what-if, a big-budget fan fiction that takes what it wants from the source material and doesn't sweat the rest of it.
The acting is variable. I've enjoyed Chalamet in everything else I've seen him in, but his performance as Wonka is a touch too "musical theater kid". I suppose it's good that he's having fun, smiling and dancing with a kind of sexless energy that conveys to the audience, "I'm not a threat!" But it doesn't exactly make for a character with depth. Given that this is generally meant to be a fairy tale, I suppose it's all right to play a superficial archetype, but there were times when the character felt "vacuous" as opposed to "relentlessly optimistic". Olivia Colman and Tom Davis are a lot of fun as the unscrupulous owners of a sweatshop laundromat--very Roald-Dahl-esque in their playful grotesqueness. (Fan fiction prompt: What if Willy Wonka met Sweeney Todd? But keep it PG, please.) Calah Lane is unfortunately rather flat as Noodle, the obligatory sad-eyed orphan. Perhaps the writing failed her, perhaps it's that Chalamet was only giving her a single note to play against, but I found her lacking in charisma, which makes her character very slight and difficult to really invest in, which in turn hampered the sweetness of the ending. Everybody else is suitable to their roles.
The biggest problem with Wonka is that it never really soars as a musical. The numbers are perhaps entertaining in the moment, but the staging often feels unimaginative and the music is forgettable. The only tunes you'll be humming on the way out of the theater are the standards from the '71 version. It almost feels as though the filmmakers made a straight narrative film and some studio head saw the result and was like, "No songs? But the audience will expect songs in a Wonka movie! Quick, go shoot a few." The third act pretty much eschews musical numbers altogether until the (underwhelming) reprise of "Imagination". Everything feels weightless and inconsequential the moment the characters start belting out a ditty, and the excess of CGI doesn't help. The movie works a lot better as a gentle comedy--pleasantly formulaic, at times emotional, and occasionally even whimsical.
Wonka is no Paddington, but there's enough to put in the Plus column that I look forward to director Paul King's next endeavor.
This is the origin story of Willy Wonka--so beholden to the 1971 version that it reuses its songs, but apparently not intended to be a canonical prequel. This Wonka is kind and magnanimous to a fault, a pure being who only wishes to inspire joy and imagination through his magical confections. It's difficult to imagine this character growing into the cynical, eccentric, and occasionally sadistic recluse Gene Wilder played. Wonka's relationship with the Oompa Loompa (Hugh Grant in a scene-stealing performance) seems carefully constructed to avoid invoking the residue of enslavement that hangs over the novel and its other adaptations. In a way, creating a backstory for a character like Wonka is as foolhardy as trying to set the Joker's origins in stone--he just works better when he's nine-tenths mystery--but the filmmakers establish so firmly early on that they're doing THEIR OWN THING that you never really feel like they're cheapening the classic interpretation of the character by over-explaining him. This is almost more of a parallel universe story, a what-if, a big-budget fan fiction that takes what it wants from the source material and doesn't sweat the rest of it.
The acting is variable. I've enjoyed Chalamet in everything else I've seen him in, but his performance as Wonka is a touch too "musical theater kid". I suppose it's good that he's having fun, smiling and dancing with a kind of sexless energy that conveys to the audience, "I'm not a threat!" But it doesn't exactly make for a character with depth. Given that this is generally meant to be a fairy tale, I suppose it's all right to play a superficial archetype, but there were times when the character felt "vacuous" as opposed to "relentlessly optimistic". Olivia Colman and Tom Davis are a lot of fun as the unscrupulous owners of a sweatshop laundromat--very Roald-Dahl-esque in their playful grotesqueness. (Fan fiction prompt: What if Willy Wonka met Sweeney Todd? But keep it PG, please.) Calah Lane is unfortunately rather flat as Noodle, the obligatory sad-eyed orphan. Perhaps the writing failed her, perhaps it's that Chalamet was only giving her a single note to play against, but I found her lacking in charisma, which makes her character very slight and difficult to really invest in, which in turn hampered the sweetness of the ending. Everybody else is suitable to their roles.
The biggest problem with Wonka is that it never really soars as a musical. The numbers are perhaps entertaining in the moment, but the staging often feels unimaginative and the music is forgettable. The only tunes you'll be humming on the way out of the theater are the standards from the '71 version. It almost feels as though the filmmakers made a straight narrative film and some studio head saw the result and was like, "No songs? But the audience will expect songs in a Wonka movie! Quick, go shoot a few." The third act pretty much eschews musical numbers altogether until the (underwhelming) reprise of "Imagination". Everything feels weightless and inconsequential the moment the characters start belting out a ditty, and the excess of CGI doesn't help. The movie works a lot better as a gentle comedy--pleasantly formulaic, at times emotional, and occasionally even whimsical.
Wonka is no Paddington, but there's enough to put in the Plus column that I look forward to director Paul King's next endeavor.
