“Wonka” reminds us immediately of the Golden Ticket in the opening sequence, giving credit to the original author, before taking us through a pink haze to a small ship where up on the mast, our Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet ) sings, “It is time to bid the seven seas farewell. And the city I’ve pinned seven years of hopes on lies just over the horizon.”

 

When we meet him, he’s wearing white-striped beige pants and a white long-sleeved shirt under a brown vest. The purple overcoat and top hat come soon enough, but they are tattered and his boots, he tells us, are leaky. He has spent all his money on his obsession with chocolate. The crew he leaved behind like him well enough, wishing him good luck and the color of his vest seems to have changed. He has only 12 silver sovereigns in his pocket. He’ll soon lose them all as he pursues his “hatful of dreams.” Yet that hat is magical as Mary Poppins carpet. You never know what he’ll be pulling out of it.

His destination has a famous restaurant on every corner and a Galeries Gourmet. But he needs a place to stay and a suspicious person Bleacher (Tom Davis) who takes him to the boarding house of Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman). Despite being warned by an orphan girl named Noodle (Calah Lane) to read the small print, Wonka signs the ridiculously lengthy contract.

The next day, Willy sells the Hoverchoc, floating chocolates that cause a person to levitate. He soon meets the leading chocolatiers: Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Felix Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) and Gerald Prodnose (Matt Lucas)–all members of the Chocolate Cartel. The police are called and all of his earnings confiscated for “disrupting the trade of other businesses.” With only a sovereign left, he believes he can cover his room, but the small print charges him for everything, including uses the steps and the soap. He owes ten thousand sovereigns which with hard labor in the basement laundry will come to 27 years and 16 days. It’s not that he didn’t read the small print, Noodle quickly deduces, Wonka can’t read.

Sent down the dirty laundry chute, Willy meets with the other unfortunates which include accountant Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), plumber Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), a quiet woman named Lottie Bell (Rhakee Thakar) and comedian Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher).  We soon learn that the police are under the control of the cartel because the chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key) is addicted to chocolate and bribed with pricy bon tons.

We do meet  an orange man with green hair, an Oompa Loompa named Lofty (because for his kind, he’s rather tall). Wonka stole cacao that Lofty (Hugh Grant) had been watching and now, by Lofty’s calculations, Wonka owes a chocolate debt that must be paid.

First recruiting Noodle and then the rest of the laundry workers, Wonka begins selling his chocolate on the streets, trying to earn enough money to free them all. But the Chocolate Cartel has both the police chief and the head priest Father Julius (Rowan Atkinson) under the thrall of their chocolates and the cartel isn’t above murder.

This is a children’s film so there will be no murders, even by chocolate. The film has a steampunk sensibility and while Chalet isn’t a dancer, the dancing numbers are still lovely enough. The costumes (by Lindy Hemming) are confectionary perfection. Chung-hoon Chung (“The Handmaiden,” 2016; “Oldboy,” 2003; and “Last Night in Soho,” 2021) casts an enchantment.  The screenplay by Paul King and Simon Farnaby is filled with whimsy and witty word turns. Wonka ask, “How to you like it? Dark, white nutty? Absolutely insane?” He gets arrested by “defying the laws of gravity” as well as “disrupting the trade of other businesses.”  As director, King brings the right light touch and respects both the dancing, choreography and the dream.

Timothy Chalamet’s vocals are pleasant enough. If Chalamet’s  Wonka was an uncle, he’d be the obsessive dreamer. Perhaps he wouldn’t be the uncle you’d ask to take your children to a dental appointment and you might not expect him to make the birthday party, but he’d bring a moment of magic into a child’s life.

On the diversity score, Chalamet is part Jewish. Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph and Natasha Rothwell are  African American. British actress Rakhee Thakrar is of Asian Indian descent. If this fictional city was in Europe then one would perhaps expect more North Africans.

This wonderfully whimsical film gives us a world of pure imagination where a man with a magical hat takes on a Chocolate cartel with new found friends. Take you kids or embrace your inner child and warm your cockles on this frothy fantasy. “Wonka” had its world premiere in London on 28 November 2023. It was released in the US on 8 December and in the US on 15 December 2023.

For a discussion on the issue of dwarfism and the Oompa-Loompa’s and a comparison of the three films “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” see this blog entry.