“Wonka” Movie Review, Live Streaming & Download

“Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.” 

That’s what reclusive master candy-maker Willy Wonka told one of the kids visiting his factory in 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Inspired by Roald Dahl’s Wonka books but not beholden to them, filmmaker Paul King’s prequel “Wonka” illustrates that maxim in a breezy two-hour musical comedy that hopes to make the audience shed a sentimental tear or two, but is mainly content to amuse, delight, and inspire cheers when the bad guys are defeated. The performances, costumes, songs and choreography are probably a lot better than they needed to be to make a hit of this project, which is, as executives like to put it, a pre-sold property (who doesn’t know and love Wonka?). 

It’s all formulaic, for sure—proudly so, with self-referential jokes and outrageous puns so numerous that they would be insufferable if they weren’t charming. But King, cowriter Simon Farnaby and their collaborators get the tone just right from the very beginning and never lose control of it, or the pacing for that matter, and although there are a few satirical or metaphorical touches that aren’t too hard to see if you’re looking for them, they’re brief, and conveyed with a throwaway sensibility, often as sight gags, so as not to salt the candy to the point where it drowns out the sweetness. 

Wonka and the film’s other main character, the resilient, resourceful Noodle (Calah Lane), who becomes his best friend and partner in adventure, are plucky orphans, which automatically renders them sympathetic. Wonka even carries around the last chocolate bar created by his mom, a candy-maker who raised him in the jungle, and stares at it whenever he needs inspiration. (Mama Wonka is played in flashbacks by Sally Hawkins, who’s become a good luck charm for big-budget fantasies.) The main bad guys are a triumvirate of all-powerful businessmen (Paterson Joseph’s Slugworth, Matt Lucas’s Prodnose, and Matthew Banton’s Fickelgruber) who control the manufacturing and distribution of candy, keep the city’s corrupt police force under their thumbs (including the chocoholic chief of police, played by Keegan-Michael Key), and have gotten laws passed that make it almost impossible for anybody else to break into the business. The central storyline of young Wonka trying to make a go of it as a chocolatier is a variation of a Horatio Alger-inspired old-movie melodrama template that often begins with an eager young man from the country stepping off a bus a big city, wearing an old suit and a tattered straw hat and carrying sticker-covered suitcases get stolen they instant he sets them down. 

“The greedy beat the needy every time,” Wonka is warned by another character. The script illustrates that idea from its opening musical sequence, which shows Wonka spending the six measly farthings he still has in his pocket on such legally mandatory expenses as a fine for daydreaming. He’s taken in by a seemingly kindhearted local innkeeper (Olivia Colman’s Mrs. Scrubbit) and her right-hand man, a looming, bass-voiced dunderhead named Bleacher (Tom Davis), only to belatedly figure out that once he signed into the hotel, he agreed to pay the bill with his own labor if necessary, and every single thing he does adds a new charge to the bottom line, including walking upstairs to his room. (The constant fines levied throughout this movie on all but the rich are a Dahl-like touch, bordering on Dickensian. Ditto the cruel characters’ tendency to slap, punch, and kick the powerless, including Noodle, who’s just a kid.) 

Wonka ends up toiling in a basement laundry processing facility along with several other indentured servants, including Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), a onetime accountant to Slugworth, and of course Noodle, who quickly bonds with Wonka, creating a sibling-like dynamic that’s one of the freshest and most appealing aspects of the movie. Wonka’s wish to liberate his buddies purifies his desire to success in the chocolate business: he’s not just doing it for himself and the memory of his dear mum, he’s doing it for them, too. But it’s a rocky road. The script is relentless in its willingness to force Wonka to take two steps back for each step forward (something Chalamet actually does in a scene where he’s walking down the steps—you don’t often see a metaphor conveyed by an actor’s footwork). 

Even the most elaborate plans unravel due to unforeseen circumstances or the octopus-like reach of the villains, requiring on-the-spot improvisation, which fortunately is something that both Wonka and Noodle are good at. And when all else fails, this is a fantasy, sometimes a cartoonish one. We’re never entirely clear on how many resources the down-and-out Wonka actually has at his disposal, and what we do see makes us wonder if he’s a wizard or demigod whose only limitations are those of conditioning or psychology. The chocolate-making “travel kit” that he carries is practically a tiny factor that seems to have its own power source, and when he finally does get to open his own chocolate shop (come on, now, like you thought he wouldn’t get to do it?) it’s up and running overnight, without a worry as to where they got the money, the materials, the permits, and the army of contractors they’d need to pull it off. (It’s cheeky, though, like the transition in “The Blues Brothers” where Cab Calloway is told that he needs to stall for time at the theater where the big show is supposed to occur, and there’s a cut to a curtain going up to reveal Calloway and the rest of the band in on a 1930s Art Deco set wearing white tuxedos and launching into “Minnie the Moocher.”)

“Wonka” is not only unapologetic in its contrivances, manipulations, and absurdist embellishments, it lets its benevolent trickster hero and a few other characters comment upon them—not as blatantly as a Bugs Bunny or Deadpool might, but practically. Nathan Crowley’s production design, Lindy Hemming’s costumes, and Chung-hoo Chung’s cinematography create a universe that has a certain harsh grittiness, and that is connected to reality through the characters’ constant economic distress, but is otherwise the audiovisual equivalent of one of Wonka’s confections. (There’s a class system here, and the one percent rules over everyone else, but there’s no racism, and Dahl’s tendency to equate conventional beauty with virtue and ugliness with nonstandard body types is mostly AWOL, except in the running gag of having the bribe-taking police chief get bigger the more illicit candy he consumes.) The city Wonka conquers is sort of London and sort of Paris, with bits and pieces from other places. But it feels more like an old/new city from a fantasy or science fiction film, or a storybook or comic book—like the cities showcased in “The French Dispatch,” “City of Lost Children” and “Moulin Rouge.” (One major and frankly puzzling drawback, though, is the cinematography, which has a gorgeous silvery look in flashbacks and daylight scenes, but at night and in dim locations looks like as washed-out and indifferently composed as a Netflix original. Whatever else you could say against Burton’s film, which I liked, it looked great from top-to-bottom.)

Writing this piece, I can’t recall any of the new songs, but I remember enjoying them while they were happening—particularly the one in the first sequence, when Wonka is separated from his six coins. Hits from the original 1971 film and the 2005 Tim Burton remake are reprised here (notably “Imagination,” which is also quoted in Joby Talbot’s score) probably because audiences expect them. They may serve as Pavlovian tear-triggers for viewers of previous generations. They’ve become part of the fabric of our inner lives through repeated exposure. 

This is, of course, the sort of reaction that intellectual property-driven productions like this one (which ultimately isn’t hugely different from a new Batman movie in its storytelling approach; the civic corruption stuff is oddly similar to “The Batman,” right down to key scenes). The performances are mostly exceptional, although the script fails a few of the actors in the laundry room by not filling out their stories as well as those of the others. “Wonka” is so good at what it does that the question of whether it’s a cynical enterprise seems moot. It’s as sincere and inscrutable as Wonka himself, played with an elegantly withholding quality by Chalamet, who during moments of quiet contemplation and madcap inspiration could be Gene Wilder’s long-lost grandchild. 

“Wonka” Movie Review, Live Streaming & Download Movie Review, Live Streaming & Download