Wonka

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When I went into this, I had only seen 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' once before, a few years ago. However, I had the pleasure of sharing this with someone I know is a big fan of the original film, and I'm happy to say that we both left it satisfied. Right off the bat, one would think it has a few strikes against it, just between being an origin story and having someone new playing Wonka, as Gene Wilder is incredibly hard to top. But while perhaps not perfect, I still got pretty much what I expected from this, and that's a good thing.

I will say right from the get-go that this takes place in a fantasy world as a whole, as opposed to the original, which I found only fantastical while inside Wonka's factory. It's pretty easy to forgive because one has to question where the magic came from in the first place, right down to an entire race of dancing, singing creatures with orange skin and green hair. This tells us a lot of what we may have wanted to know about Willy Wonka, the man, complete with his childhood dreams of running the best chocolate factory in the world and the trouble he runs into along the way.

Here, we meet Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) as a magician and inventor who has a special skill with making chocolate by using the most fantastically rare ingredients from the darkest, most exotic parts of the world. He comes to Europe in an attempt to establish a chocolate shop at the Galeries Gourmet, set in a fictional town modeled after a combination of London, Paris and Prague. Upon is arrival, and a pretty solid musical number to introduce himself, Wonka finds himself suddenly broke and setting up camp on a nearby bench.

Here, Wonka meets a gruff-looking stranger named Bleacher (Tom Davis) who offers him a place to stay at the boarding house of Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman). He signs a document, spends the night, and in the morning heads to town to try to sell his chocolate for the first time. Despite intrigue from citizens of the town, however, he is quickly shut down by a trio of chocolate company owners, Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) after which he returns to the boarding house to pay for his night with the little bit left for him.

Upon trying to pay, however, Wonka is tricked into staying after failing to read the fine print under the document Scrubitt has him sign upon his arrival. He is then forced into the basement to work in laundry along with several others who failed to read the fine print, namely, a girl who goes only by "Noodle" (Calah Lane) whom he eventually befriends along with former accountant Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), former telephone operator Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar), former failed comedian Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher) and Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), whose former occupation I frankly don't recall.

While Mrs. Scrubitt and Bleacher run things like some sort of sweat shop, Wonka and Noodle try to figure out a way to get his more than worthy chocolate to the outside world and hopefully get themselves free. But even if they manage, they'll have the other three professional choclateeers to deal with, trying to stop him every step of the way. And while this remains a prequel, and we basically know how it all works out in the end, it is nevertheless entertaining to get to see how it all went down, right down to our first meeting with an Oompa Loompa (Hugh Grant).

Atmospherically, it's somewhere between 'Paddington' as far as its charm and whimsy and 'Fantastic Beasts' as far as the magical aspects of it. To put it very simply, this is a nice, family-friendly movie that's full of great and, I would say, clevely written music and just a fun time, all around. I can't deny that there were actually several laugh out loud moments for me here, and none of them are really low-brow. I can't promise the die-hards will enjoy this, but I have to argue that it does a very good job for what it is, and recommend checking it out if you're on the lookout for something that is bound to leave you with a smile.

4/5

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