Review: Wonka is eccentric, musical and boring
Literature has played a very important role in the entertainment industry, novels have been adapted to films and these to successful sagas, these works have several varied themes ranging from children’s to fantasy and more current themes.
We could list the authors who have seen their material in real action on a movie screen, one of them has been the British writer Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990) who has delighted children and adults for generations with his works that include James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970), Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), The Witches (1983), Matilda (1988) among others.
One of his most popular works is undoubtedly Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has had 2 film adaptations, the first titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) by director Mel Stuart, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (2005) by director Tim Burton and the animated film Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017) by director Spike Brandt as well as a Broadway musical Charlie & the Chocolate Factory: The musical (2017) with songs composed by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
The fantastic story of an eccentric chocolatier returns to the big screen in 2023, director Paul King’s Wonka is a modernized film of this literary classic.
What is the film about?
Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) tells the wonderful story of how the greatest inventor, magician, businessman, traveler, and chocolatier became the beloved Willy Wonka we know today, full of ideas and determined to change the world, this enthusiastic young man is ready to prove that the best things in life begin with a dream and it doesn’t matter what you have to do to fulfill it.
Willy Wonka as a literary character is, by the standards we use today, strange and eccentric, the latter may be timeless, but the truth is that the versions that Gene Wilder and Johnny Deep already embodied at the time have been very different in their context and concept, while one was happier the other was more sinister, the story is the same, a successful chocolate factory that no one can enter and a humble child wins a golden ticket to know the mysteries and secrets that this factory hides.
Wonka intends to go further not to the future of the character but to his past so that we can know the origins of how he was able to found that empire based on delicious chocolate, the creators and screenwriters Simon Farnaby and Paul King take too many liberties in wanting to give him a different twist and that in turn can connect with the novel and even the film productions that precede it, this may seem like a good idea and the difficult thing is to give it shape and make it believable within how fantastic it may be that a project like this can work.
With multiverses being so fashionable, we dare to say that this is part of something that is but is not within a previously established canon, one that has imposed its own rules and one of them is precisely that everything is independent. There is no relationship. In any of them, it is difficult for us to believe that Timothée Chalamet’s Wonka could be the adults, Wilder and Deep, there is simply no connection.
The film as a project experiments a lot with exaggerated fantasy and the excessive use of CGI, which although it recreates environments and characters that do not exist is very attractive, the color palette, as well as its photography, becomes impressive at times, and the visual quality is very novel and perhaps it is the only thing that can contribute because on the one hand, we have this and on the other its history and its subplots, that perverse game of us being the spectators having to deduce what is happening with these 2 things is an area of comfort that we have already talked about on many occasions in other reviews.
Paul King labels his new film as a traditional and commercial film production but as a visual spectacle. During the opening titles, he describes himself as a musical and adventure film that tries to give a message and fit into the modernity of this century with the new generations and the possibility of it becoming a successful franchise, which is very far from becoming.
We agree that there are things that do not need a sequel or a prequel, nor do they need to be modernized and be politically correct and inclusive, it is evident that the lack of ideas in Hollywood has led its writers to search through what by is and to pretend that a successful product can be born from this, this is already a constant problem that is becoming more and more accentuated and that is losing more audience, not to mention the serious financial problems that the main and large studios have today.
His story completely lacks a factor that can pleasantly surprise us, this is because many or few, locals and strangers, already know what this young Wonka is going to transform into, who here is an aspiring chocolatier who already dominates to the point of being able to make magic, to prove himself he arrives in a fictitious European city to compete with the most elegant and respected chocolate manufacturers in the world, what he has in his favor is his incredible creativity to mix flavors to the rhythm of catchy songs that end up being a nuisance.
The film has a clear line of how to circulate within its narrative but is not clear about where it wants to go, during the first 10 minutes and with an immediately ingratiating song that talks about his hopes and dreams and how to achieve them, however, The film goes from being fantastic to delving into the world of the chocolate mafia as if it were a drug cartel, among which are the respected Mr. Prodnose (Matt Lucas), Mr. Fickelgruber (Matthew Baynton) and Mr. Slugworth ( Paterson Joseph) who compete to dominate this business and the market in general where they will not allow anyone else, much less an asshole, to succeed with a chocolate that makes customers fly in a unique experience.
Doomed to failure and public ridicule and harassed by his corrupt police chief (Keegan-Michael Key), Willy struggles to fulfill his dream. It is evident and predictable that this becomes a problem and even more so when he meets Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Colman), a landlady who uses her boarding contracts to turn visitors into slaves, it is there where she meets a girl named Noodle (Calah Lane) with whom she will form a friendly alliance and who, together with her creations, will manage to buy her freedom.
After many unnecessary songs and a dose of unfinished action, we well know that he will neither remain a slave nor fail to realize his dream, come on, we already know Willy Wonka, be it Wilder or Deep or even the literary character, what they intend here is to make us believe that all of this does not exist yet and is going to be forged in future films, something that I still believe is not possible but hey, anything can happen in that fantasy world but not in real life.
As for what is visually recreated, we cannot complain, the production design by Nathan Crowley and costume designer Lindy Hemming created a world so fantastic and believable that only Wonka could imagine. The recreation of the town square is a strange mix of classic European architectural influences with modern touches. Each setting we see, from the elegant chocolate shop to the Cartel’s elaborate lairs, is designed with great care and detail that amazes us as spectators. of the most important point that is its history.
Its biggest flaw is the script, there is too much wasted plot apparently to justify a prequel to a perfect children’s/youth story, focusing on that is leaving aside the direction it wants and should take, the subplots are extremely strange and without much sense, its conclusion is guessable and nothing surprising, he befriends this girl, frees her and adopts her, but we are leaving aside one of the key characters in these stories, the famous and hard-working Lofty (Hugh Grant) represents the Oompa Loompas and how that friendship/work that we saw very briefly in the previous films is forged.
Musically, Wonka has original songs written by Neil Hannon that contain some samples of the well-known Pure Imagination and Oompa Loompa that shamelessly advocate nostalgia but that in their execution become a nuisance that interrupts at every moment the development of everything else including that of their characters.
The film wastes too much time with the songs in which each one tries to carry the message of celebrating the power of imagination and the beauty of dreaming big, that friendship and love for what one does is everything to obtain the desired success, of finding a place in the world and the importance of remaining faithful to one’s vision, principles and values regardless of the obstacles, that chocolate no matter what it is is delicious, the theme of friendship cannot be missing that everything can and the politically correct inclusion with this African American girl who despite her condition has everything to succeed, a moral and trite discourse that is more embedded here than in other productions.
The cast is made up of Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Jim Carter, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman, Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant who do much more than is required, faced with this multi-star cast, their characters along with their development fall too short, if we have actors and actresses of this level at least we must offer a good script in which each one can have their fair share of time and that does not happen and is surely due because they continue with this model of continuing to tell things in future installments and I insist, I don’t think that will ever happen.
The score composed by Joby Talbot desperately tries to keep up with the film’s rhythm, the few pieces desperately try to convey some emotion and fantasy in each scene and fail to do so, which is a shame, there are very redeemable pieces that are lost and They are diluted in the edition.
In conclusion, if you think that this film will give too many revelations and details about Willy Wonka’s past, it is not exactly what it is interested in telling, it is not risky, it is not original, and it is not something that contributes to the genre beyond the technical, It is just a visually entertaining experiment that is completely unnecessary in current cinematography, it is a pretext for Warner studios to remain moderately valid during this Christmas season in which, after a pandemic, returning to theaters is the goal to obtain profits regardless of that the product they present is very questionable.
Wonka is already out in theaters in your country.
