Jason Bailey
With the exception of Tim Burton, I can’t imagine a soul on this planet was less interested in Paul King’s Wonka than this one. Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yielded one great film adaptation, Mel Stuart’s 1971 family classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, but Burton’s 2005 reimagining (which reclaimed the book’s title) was an absolute nightmare, both the director and his frequent star Johnny Depp indulging their absolute worst instincts. And the idea of an origin story, detailing exactly how Wonka became the beloved chocalatier, sounded like a mighty dire hook to hang a motion picture on. Add in trailers that looked aggressively, even obnoxiously, quirky, and this one sounded like a chore to be dreaded.
That resistance melted away in about five minutes flat. Wonka is a delightful little treasure, in which director King (Paddington, Paddington 2) manages to skillfully leap-frog most of the landmines typical of this sort of craven IP exploitation. There are, to be sure, little easter eggs spread throughout Wonka, sly shout-outs to the original 1971 film, and to Gene Wilder’s iconic origination of the character; some are cutsier than others. But King isn’t just winking or cashing in. He’s doing something much more difficult (and honorable): attempting to recreate the style and spirit of the ’71 picture, without falling into the beat-by-beat mirroring of something like Mary Poppins Returns. Indeed, Wonka has less in common with Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than James Bobin’s The Muppets — the work of a filmmaker who has clearly studied and understood why a beloved film works, and follows a similar playbook without resorting to slavish imitation.
Young Wonka is played by Timothée Chalamet, and it’s a difficult role, especially for such a naturalistic actor. As written, Wonka must navigate a thin line between whimsy and insufferability, and he mostly stays on the right side of it; he must also look quite silly, quite frequently, and what does get the whiff, on occasion, of self-consciousness from the hip young actor. But he’s pushed through those rough spots by the witty script by King and his Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby; when summarized, the story sounds awfully silly, but it’s all done in such high spirits and infectious momentum that you just go along with it. There’s a bunch of nonsense about how the young upstart crosses London’s powerful, monopolistic “chocolate cartel”, and by the end of the damn thing Wonka is some sort of sweet-treat fugitive, wily dodging a police force led by a corrupt chief (Keegan Michael Key) who’s in the pocket of Big Chocolate. (Thankful bonus, for anyone who’s read the Dahl book: we get a far more culturally acceptable origin story for the Oompah-Loompahs.)
The original songs, by Irish singer/songwriter Neil Hannon are charming, and the numbers are energetically staged — the choreography, while precisely worked through, has a likably loose, shaggy-dog quality that matches the material. And King borrows one neat trick from the aforementioned The Muppets; that film only recycled one song from its inspirational material (“The Rainbow Connection”), and saved it for a perfect point late in the picture, for maximum sob effect. I won’t share which Willy Wonka tune reappears, or how — but when it does, well, get ready for the water works.
The supporting cast is nicely stacked; standouts include Olivia Colman having a grand old time in what amounts to the Miss Hannigan role, and Keegan Michael Key in prime mugging mode (some have already objected to fat jokes of his character, who is paid by the cartel in chocolate and balloons over the course of the running time, but for whatever reason, those gags didn’t come off as mean-spirited to this particular stocky boy). From the Paddington pictures, King brings over Sally Hawkins in a flashback role that’s brief but elegantly executed, while Hugh Grant carries over the joyful hamminess of his Paddington 2 work, and steals the entire picture in just a handful of scenes.
The primary problem with Wonka is the same one as in most origin stories: the inherent lack of dramatic tension. Because we know where he’ll end up, there’s no doubt that he’ll conquer any roadblocks encountered here; there’s therefore no real weight to his fake-out almost-death, and when the villains offer him a deal contingent on him never making chocolate again, well, there’s not a moment’s doubt how he’ll go. But now that studios are afraid to finance anything that doesn’t feature something people have already heard of, the cinema of Jon Voight’s hairy ball sack is seemingly inescapable. And as far as unnecessary prequels go, you can clearly do a lot worse than this.
A-
“Wonka” is in theaters Friday.
