Wonka is one of those movies that thinks its existence is enough to satisfy an audience for two hours. The director, Paul King, made the two Paddington movies. Yet, the charm and wit of those movies is lost here. This is the result of a movie director getting too comfortable with the source material that they don’t try to take any chances.
King co-wrote the movie with Simon Farnaby who also helped him write Paddington 2, a rarity where the sequel is better than the first one. Unfortunately, this movie is a prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but King can’t grasp the playful macabre Dahl brought to his works filmmakers did with his other works The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. With the exception of Willy Wonka (Timothee Chalamet wrongly miscast in this role), Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph) and the Oompa-Loompas (one of which Lofty is played very charming by Hugh Grant).
And that’s the problem. It’s too charming. You can just tell how the cast had a great time, even though they should have held back. For Paddington, I can understand. But Dahl’s works need that extra little edge that makes the audience wonder if it’s going too far with younger audiences. Take the boat ride scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or the boys turning into mice in The Witches. King is afraid of scary anyone, even when he delves into Wonka’s past where Sally Hawkins plays his mother.
And that’s why the movie has more of a Dickensian element to it that never fuller feels appropriate considering the source material. The problem with Tim Burton’s adaptation in 2005 was that he went overboard too. Burton’s style was overused on the movie whereas it felt like someone trying to emulate and copy Burton. For what it’s worth, Mel Stuart, the director of the 1971 movie, was able to mix fantasy and reality together that it seemed plausible. And that movie ironically was only made to sell candy bars that screwed up and had to be pulled off the market.
For lack of a better word, King sugarcoats what made Dahl’s book so memorable. Instead, we get a far too likeable and gullible Wonka as he tries to start his business in London. Yet he finds out a conspiracy to keep new chocolatiers from getting the business that Slugworth and others involved in the Chocolate Cartel have. They have corrupted the local chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key) by supplying him with chocolate to the point he becomes so morbidly obese he can’t walk. Rowan Atkinson appears as a clergy who is also involved. The cast it self is a who’s who of British thespians and that’s another problem. It’s too distracting.
Wonka finds himself in severe indebtedness in a boarding house that runs a scam overcharging customers for using the steps up and down to their rooms and anything else. The house is run by Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman hamming it up too much with the cockney accent.). She and Bleacher (Tom Davis) keep Wonka and others in a basement where they have to do hard labor to work off their debts. It never really does have the effect it should mainly because Colman plays the role too nice and there’s a subplot about her and Bleacher becoming romantically involved that is soon scrapped. Again, this is another issue with King trying to play it too nice. If Mrs. Scrubitt had been as maniacal like Miranda Richardson as Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run, you could have found yourself rooting more for Wonka and the others in debt.
And here, it’s Wonka and his relationship with the others indebted seems way too forced. There’s no real mystery to what is going to happen. It’s just a plot point that seemed better on paper. He meets a young teenage girl, Noodle (Calah Lane), who becomes his assistant as he works on making and selling his chocolates. But it leaves me wondering? Where does he get the money to keep making these chocolates as they work out a daily scheme they can get out of the basement where they’re forced to do laundry and other jobs.
At two hours, this movie never really seems as entertaining as King and the cast want it to be. The songs are so forgettable you don’t remember the lyrics after they quit singing and you’re hoping we’re going to get somewhere with the plot but it’s just filler to the next song and dance that lacks real enthusiasm. All dialogue is spoken too prepared. Mike Nichols once got on to an acting student telling him he needed to speak as if this was the first time we was saying the words. Here, you feel every line of dialogue has been so neatly prepared and rehearsed that you can sense the hidden blandness in every delivery.
This also suffers from the same problem that movies like The Polar Express, Nightmare Before Christmas and The Santa Clause movies have in common. There’s a rotten scent of pretention around it. I hate to keep using this phrase but this movie insists upon itself. Maybe because Chalamet is just wrong as Wonka. Gene Wilder was able to add his own madness to the role. And even though it looked like he was doing a Michael Jackson impersonation, Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was able to portrayed Wonka as a person stuck in arrested development. Chalamet never fully embraces the role and just feels like he’s attending a costume party.
For a movie where so much is going on, it’s not as creative and imaginative as it thinks it is.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 