Roald Dahl once wrote that he found Gene Wilder's performance as Wonka in 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to be a way too "sappy and saccharine" version of the character he first envisioned. Well, if that one was "a bit too much", Dahl is lucky to have passed away before he could witness the Timothée Chalamet version.
Here is a Wonka who is full of cheer and whimsy. Being that it's a prequel, I guess we are to understand that this is set before he adopted more kooky and sinister traits, ergo this isn't quite the Wonka we know. The real issue, perhaps, is the casting. Chalamet can be dark and brooding (Dune), and a little creepy if he needs to (Bones and All), but having him dial up the whimsy feels off.
Of course, I also believe that there's a missed opportunity here. A while ago, with regards to FXP's The Bear, I wrote this: "When Timothée Chalamet was cast for the upcoming Willy Wonka prequel, many TV nerds pointed out that they could've gone with Jeremy Allen White if they wanted someone who has a sort of Chalamet energy to him, but actually LOOKS like a younger Gene Wilder, supposing that's the Wonka they were going for. ... Having watched the show that put White on the map, I see it even more. It's like they had some kind of character customization slider with Wilder on one end and Chalamet on the other and cranked it all the way up to Chalamet when they could've left it in the middle and gotten White."
Ultimately, however, I warmed up to Chalamet as the picture went along. His singing isn't always great, yet there is an earnestness to it all that seems to have won critics over. Indeed, as if this year in movies wasn't already wild enough, it now closes out with the revelation that, yeah, even the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fan-fic prequel is a part of the "cinema is back" club. It's good -- for the most part.
Perhaps we were foolish to presume that a Willy Wonka musical as done by the man behind Paddington -- boasting a cast of such names as Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, and Olivia Colman -- would be mere soulless IP nostalgia bait, especially in the year when Hollywood pictures of that ilk finally would begin to f*ck off. (So starved indeed were people for anything other than the usual slop, with its green-screened everything and persistent key-jangling, that even the return of the Saw franchise, itself more "on fire" than before, was cause for more jubilation than, say, a lot of Disney's output in 2023.) Sure enough, Wonka has more lively and well-staged musical numbers than any of Disney's recent remakes and is unabashedly colorful to look at.
I maintain that some aspects looked unpromising as the trailers came out and that the final product is flawed, but this was still a joyous viewing that certainly left me in the mood for some exotic sweets.
One still baffling element is the casting of Wonka's first Oompa-Loompa. Instead of a little-person actor, it's Hugh Grant's head on a small body. I understand if little people would find this sort of role demeaning (or if Peter Dinklage's comments about the exploitation of little people made studios less willing to cast little-person performers in roles like this, ironically making the landscape more difficult for the group he sought to protect, as they now get even less work), but this isn't really a sight one gets used to.
Lastly, allow me to once more evoke David Ehrlich with the following musing: "There's a delicious irony to the fact that Warner Bros.' first big release since Discovery CEO David Zaslav (once again) canned a completed film in exchange for a $30 million tax write-off is an anti-capitalist fable set in a city run by a ruthless chocolate cartel who've diluted their own product in order to hoard the profits." Hollywood will never be perfect, but sometimes, as with the year 2023, it lets out more gold than usual. Golden tickets, if you will? No? Okay.
Here is a Wonka who is full of cheer and whimsy. Being that it's a prequel, I guess we are to understand that this is set before he adopted more kooky and sinister traits, ergo this isn't quite the Wonka we know. The real issue, perhaps, is the casting. Chalamet can be dark and brooding (Dune), and a little creepy if he needs to (Bones and All), but having him dial up the whimsy feels off.
Of course, I also believe that there's a missed opportunity here. A while ago, with regards to FXP's The Bear, I wrote this: "When Timothée Chalamet was cast for the upcoming Willy Wonka prequel, many TV nerds pointed out that they could've gone with Jeremy Allen White if they wanted someone who has a sort of Chalamet energy to him, but actually LOOKS like a younger Gene Wilder, supposing that's the Wonka they were going for. ... Having watched the show that put White on the map, I see it even more. It's like they had some kind of character customization slider with Wilder on one end and Chalamet on the other and cranked it all the way up to Chalamet when they could've left it in the middle and gotten White."
Ultimately, however, I warmed up to Chalamet as the picture went along. His singing isn't always great, yet there is an earnestness to it all that seems to have won critics over. Indeed, as if this year in movies wasn't already wild enough, it now closes out with the revelation that, yeah, even the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fan-fic prequel is a part of the "cinema is back" club. It's good -- for the most part.
Perhaps we were foolish to presume that a Willy Wonka musical as done by the man behind Paddington -- boasting a cast of such names as Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, and Olivia Colman -- would be mere soulless IP nostalgia bait, especially in the year when Hollywood pictures of that ilk finally would begin to f*ck off. (So starved indeed were people for anything other than the usual slop, with its green-screened everything and persistent key-jangling, that even the return of the Saw franchise, itself more "on fire" than before, was cause for more jubilation than, say, a lot of Disney's output in 2023.) Sure enough, Wonka has more lively and well-staged musical numbers than any of Disney's recent remakes and is unabashedly colorful to look at.
I maintain that some aspects looked unpromising as the trailers came out and that the final product is flawed, but this was still a joyous viewing that certainly left me in the mood for some exotic sweets.
One still baffling element is the casting of Wonka's first Oompa-Loompa. Instead of a little-person actor, it's Hugh Grant's head on a small body. I understand if little people would find this sort of role demeaning (or if Peter Dinklage's comments about the exploitation of little people made studios less willing to cast little-person performers in roles like this, ironically making the landscape more difficult for the group he sought to protect, as they now get even less work), but this isn't really a sight one gets used to.
Lastly, allow me to once more evoke David Ehrlich with the following musing: "There's a delicious irony to the fact that Warner Bros.' first big release since Discovery CEO David Zaslav (once again) canned a completed film in exchange for a $30 million tax write-off is an anti-capitalist fable set in a city run by a ruthless chocolate cartel who've diluted their own product in order to hoard the profits." Hollywood will never be perfect, but sometimes, as with the year 2023, it lets out more gold than usual. Golden tickets, if you will? No? Okay.