Since his breakout role in Call Me By Your Name, Timothee Chalamet has mostly gone from strength to strength, from elevating otherwise completely mediocre films like Beautiful Boy to being the standout member of perfect ensembles in the likes of Little Women and Bones and All to leading the masterful Dune adaptation to glory. With Wonka, though, he finds his first real stumble, trying to add a new string to his bow with a whimsical musical that proves just a bit too antithetical to his natural sensibilities. It’s a shame in part because I’m always rooting for him as one of the vanishingly few millennial movie stars, and in part because the film around him is otherwise a really great time, taking an iffy premise (‘Willy Wonka musical prequel’) and making Christmas-y magic with it.
Of course, we shouldn’t really have expected otherwise given that Wonka is helmed by Paul King, who turned Paddington and its sequel into some of the most beloved movies of the last decade, and his earnestly silly sensibilities prove a perfect fit here too. Following a young and down-on-his-luck Wonka (Chalamet) in the time before he became a legendary, factory-owning recluse, King and regular writing partner Simon Farnaby transport us to a vaguely interwar European city (part London, part Paris, part Vienna), a wintry but shiny wonderland that is just wonderfully festive.
As Willy, already a supernatural genius in the art of chocolate-making, tries his hand at opening his own shop, he’s stymied by a collection of villains and hurdles. First, there’s the already-entrenched sweet shop businesses, aka the ‘Chocolate Cartel’, led by the dastardly Mr Slugworth (Paterson Joseph). Then, there’s the evil owner of Willy’s boarding house, Mrs Scrubbit (Olivia Colman, giving a proper Dahl villain performance that is very welcome in the otherwise treacly story), who forces all her guests into servitude in the laundry room. And finally, there’s an Oompa Loompa called Lofty (Hugh Grant), who is in the business of stealing any chocolate that Willy does manage to make.
It’s all a tremendous amount of fun, bolstered by the sparky musical numbers and plenty of proper gags – Joseph in particular is hilarious as an evil toff, taking all his most outrageous line reads from his time as Johnson on Peep Show (think the way he says ‘Frankfwort’ in the JLB going under episode) and dialling them up to 11. In fact, the whole supporting cast is pretty great – for me as a fan of King’s work on The Mighty Boosh it was an especial thrill to see Rich Fulcher pop up as a failed stand-up comedian – mitigating the miscast at the centre.
Chalamet has been goofy and funny in small bursts before, but his natural mode is charismatic brooding and going this broadly zany is clearly a struggle. It’s pretty impressive that the rest of the movie is funny and affecting enough (it’s hardly going to induce Paddington 2 level tears, but, just like the central confections, it’s irresistibly sweet) that this stumble is far from a dealbreaker, but it does leave a slight aftertaste of disappointment.
That said, I doubt any of the kids watching are going to notice or care. They’re much too likely to be enthralled by the panto villainy, kind-hearted ensemble of unlikely heroes, and the incredibly imaginative chocolate design, while parents finally have a route into the Dahl world that isn’t terrifying thanks to either the nightmare tunnel of the 70s film or the skin-crawling presence of Johnny Depp in the 2005 one. Though ‘Pure Imagination’ and the iconic Oompa Loompa rhythms make their way into the soundtrack, King also manages to make this a prequel that pretty much stands alone (there are no references to, say, the Bucket family), creating a magical world not quite from scratch but with mostly his own building blocks.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 