Surprise: ‘Wonka’ is wonderful

Timothee Chalamet proves a worthy successor to Gene Wilder in this musical fantasy prequel

Image: Warner Bros

When it was announced, about two years ago, that Timothee Chalamet would play Willy Wonka in a new musical about Wonka’s origin story, was anyone excited? I don’t remember any of the reactions to that announcement being the slightest bit positive. 

But now, the film has arrived and it’s a pleasant surprise. The production design is gorgeous, the songs are better than average, and the Wonka mythology is (mostly) faithful. This is a highly enjoyable movie.

Wonka comes from Paul King, the director of the two Paddington movies, which both took an established, decades-old character and spun him into something much more delightful than expected. The other big clear inspiration is 2017’s The Greatest Showman, another musical that was released at Christmastime, and featured a hero who talks and sings a lot about dreams and ambition. 

The new film functions as an origin story to the Willy Wonka we know, although the director has said on the record that it’s the 1971 Gene Wilder version that’s in canon here, rather than the 2005 Johnny Depp/Tim Burton one or even Roald Dahl’s original novel. For the record, I have a deep love for the Wilder film and absolutely loathe the Depp one, although Futurama’s “Fry and the Slurm Factory” parody is among my favorite comedy things of all time.

The idea here is that a young and illiterate Willy Wonka has arrived in a European city that strongly resembles Paris but is never named, full of dreams from his late mother of becoming the world’s greatest chocolatier. 

However, the city’s business is controlled by a corrupt chocolate cartel (Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, and Matthew Baynton), through a convoluted scheme that involves hoarding the real chocolate and using it for bribes. It’s a Gotham City-style environment of corruption where everyone is on the take, even the local priest (Mr. Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson) as well as the sheriff (Keegan-Michael Key, in an ever-growing fat suit, in what’s the film’s one true sour note- and also it’s only hint in the entire movie that eating lots of chocolate isn’t good for you.) 

Wonka has been forced into servitude working at a laundromat (run by a very overqualified Olivia Colman), along with several others who become his friends. This includes Noodle (the delightful newcomer Calah Lane), who has a secret backstory of her own. And the film cracks the Oompa Loompa question brilliantly- with Hugh Grant, the villain from the director’s Paddington 2, playing the film’s only Oompa Loompa in a love/hate relationship with Wonka. 

The film’s ultimate lesson, that dreams are worth hanging on to and it’s important to have friends, would appear to go against the ethos of the Willy Wonka we see in the Wilder film, who’s essentially a hermit; it’s not clear what happened to all the other characters in the meantime. Might we get a sequel, that bridges the gap, and takes us from the wide-eyed Chalamet Wonka to the more cynical version from the Wilder version? 

Chalamet is nearly a complete success in the Wonka role. He’s not doing a direct impression of Wilder but does lift some mannerisms, and of course, numerous catchphrases carry over from the 1971 film, as well as at least two songs. The musical numbers are uniformly excellent, using new songs from Northern Irish composer Neil Hannon. It’s yet another film that did a much better job with original music than Disney’s Wish did last month. 

Beyond that, there’s just the right amount of fan service. This is a film that, while faithful to the source material, also tells its own story. 

I would not have guessed that I would end up loving this film, but the movies continue to surprise us all the time.