Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wonka’ on Max, a Perfectly Silly Timothee Chalamet-Led Musical Prequel

For anyone yearning to hear the world “chocolate” rhymed with “hands in your pock-o-lit” there’s Wonka (now streaming on Max, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the new musical prequel to the 1971 Gene Wilder classic and Roald Dahl adaptation Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Paul King, who helmed two snuggly-wuggly Paddington movies, directs this origin fable of mercurial chocolatier Willy Wonka, here played by Timothee Chalamet, who may have whiplash now, considering his previous role was as a lovelorn cannibal. Wonka ended up being box office champ during a particularly flimsy Christmas season (it’s biggest competition was a soggy Aquaman sequel), capitalizing on some pretty good reviews that might’ve benefitted from the general goodwill that Santa and Jesus bring every year – but now that we’re in the thick of the winter doldrums, the movie has some heavier lifting to do. Let’s see if it succeeds.

WONKA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Willy Wonka (Chalamet) is in a great mood considering he’s been on a boat for seven years. He finally arrives in, what city is this now? I dunno. Let’s just call it “Blondon.” It looks like someplace where you might bump into Harry Potter or an unadorned, regular-sized Hugh Grant (more on him in a minute). And what year is it? I’m going to guess nineteen fifty-twelve-and-a-half. The setting isn’t quite real, is what I’m getting at, mostly because it’s a time and place where magic is real. Anyway. Where was I? Right: Wonka is singing. Specifically, about his “hatful of dreams.” He stands in a busy urban square in what’s apparently the city’s Confectionary District, eyeballing an empty storefront where he’d love, just LOOOOOVE, to open a chocolate shop. He’s very confident about the quality of his chocolates, since he’d be in direct competition with three other shops populating three adjacent corners and owned by three pompous crumbsuckers named Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Er, I mean, Plodnose, Fickelgruber and Slugworth. Apologies. Got my Dahls mixed up for a second there. These three buttnuggets belong to a secret cabal – let’s call it the Chocoluminati – who Run Things Around Here, and are greedy, and controlling, and very very ugly on the inside.

Wonka is a helluva dreamer. He envisions everyone dancing along to his songs and eating his succulent wares, and then is asked by the cops to move along, because apparently hallucinating in public is against the law. Now remember, he’s quite literally right off the boat, which means he quickly gets suckered by Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman) and her lackey Bleacher (Tom Davis), innkeepers who contractually enslave naiveniks like him to work in their miserable basement laundry room. Why’d Wonka sign the contract? Well, besides being illiterate, he’s also kind of a doofus. Pragmatism just ain’t his bag, man. And that ends up being OK in this situation, because he might just inspire a revolt among his fellow enslavees, most notable among them being Noodle (Calah Lane), a poor little orphan girl who becomes tight bros with our protag, and commits to teaching him how to read and write.

Now let’s divert our attention from the plot machinery to see just what makes Wonka’s chocolates so wonderful. He makes them in a mini-laboratory of sorts that folds out of a suitcase and defies the laws of physics, although his hat is more of a physics-law-defier, since he can pop it off and flip it over and pull all sorts of things out of it, e.g., a full pot of hot tea. He makes little numnums from all manner of exotic ingredients, e.g., marshmallow from the “mallow marshes” of Peru, which makes you wonder if he ever borrowed a jar of marmalade from Paddington, and what he might make out of it. And his concoctions do amazing things, e.g., making the eater float in the air like a balloon. No wonder the Chocoluminati, who churn out the equivalent of the cheap off-brand chocolate you’ll get in the seasonal section at CVS, is so threatened by him. 

Eventually, Noodle helps Wonka formulate a plan to sneak out of the laundry by day and sell chocolates to make money to pay for their freedom, doing all kinds of conspicuous things – dancing on rooftops, floating over the city with a handful of balloons, etc. – that all the in-cahooters in Blondon surely won’t notice. And there are a whole bunch of those cahoots; in addition to the Chocoluminati and Scrubitt and Bleacher, there’s the local choco-addict chief of police (Keegan Michael-Key in a fatsuit; you’ve been warned) who can be bribed with sweets, and a choco-addict priest (Rowan Atkinson) who, along with his 500 choco-addict monks, guard the secret entrance to the Chocoluminati’s secret lair. On top of all this, we get Sally Hawkins in flashbacks as Wonka’s dear, sweet, departed mom, and Hugh Grant’s face on a CGI Oompa Loompa named Lofty, who’s been tracking Wonka for years for stealing the Oompas’ cocoa beans. And don’t forget, as if there isn’t enough going on here already, there’s singing and dancing all through all these goings-on. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The warm, storybook aesthetic of the Paddingtons is intact here, and there are bits that bring to mind Les Miserables and various Dickens adaptations. In the context of the Roaldiverse, I didn’t like Wonka as much as Tim Burton’s emo-leaning Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (although whether it holds up a decade-and-a-half later, I’m not sure), and of course nothing will ever compare to Wilder’s turn as Wonka in the 1971 film.

Performance Worth Watching: Disappointingly, Hawkins is in about seven frames of the film, and doesn’t interact with Chalamet – inspiring hopes that we’ll see her playing Chalamet’s mother in a far less silly movie one of these days. So let’s hand this accolade to Colman, who, as one of the movie’s too many villains, is delightfully menacing, and gives us a memorable performance among too many forgettable ones.

Memorable Dialogue: Mom Sally Hawkins inspires her boy: “Every good thing in the world started with a dream.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Wonka: Chocotastic? Eh. It works. The movie’s brand of pandemoniumism tends to hop back and forth over the wearisome/charming divide, moving along quicker than most nearly-two-hour movies feel through its overcomplicated, overpopulated spotty-plotty story (the remedial haves-vs.-the-have-nots plot? Yawn), albeit without the sense of loosey-goosey shoes-untied stumbling-falling-down jabberwockied fun you might expect from a Chalamet-led musical piloted by the Paddington guy. In fact, Chalamet offers more veneer than soul in the role, although for better or worse, he pretty much fits nicely within the movie’s visually flat, heavily CGI’ed aesthetic. 

There are moments when Parks’ visual approach is thoughtful and creative, but you’ll frequently stick your finger in the pot to taste and declare that it needs less derivation and more imagination. We get lots of scenes of plotting do-badders, nigh-inexplicable giraffe-based comedy, the wedged-in Oompa Loompa subplot and diddlefarting up the wazoo. Now, diddlefarting isn’t a sin – one might assert that diddlefarting isn’t truly diddlefarting without nigh-inexplicable giraffe-based comedy – but if it isn’t greased with the lubricant of fun, you might start noticing how Wonka feels more manufactured than truly inspired. Which isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable; it’s just barely fun enough, and if that’s enough for you, hey, knock yourself out.

Our Call: Wonka summary: Visually? Sure, it’s fine I guess. Musically? Meh, it’s best bits dip from the OG Chocolate Factory. Dramatically? It’s of passable interest. There’s some joy to be had here – and there are worse ways to pass your time, so STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.