Wonka Review

There are all sorts of shoddy jokes to be made about how films secure their funding. What boxes it must check and where the cheapest locations are. A free pass is given to any feature film which can try and prise the ongoing desire Rowan Atkinson has to portray religious clergymen. He does so in Wonka, the latest piece of Roald Dahl-adjacent storytelling, adapting a young Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) as he becomes a world-renowned chocolate maker and child trafficker, as was alluded to in sick conspiracies around the first feature to bring the man to life, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Here he traps Hugh Grant in a glass jar, is flippant of Keegan-Michael Key’s police work and force-feeds the Peep Show and Little Britain alumni with sickening glee. 

Sickening is the right word for Wonka, and to avoid the inevitable gluttony which comes from chocolate-based puns, there is an all too-sweet sense to this one. It is the flatlining momentum which carries many Hollywood features, the sheen and sleekness of it all leaving no room for natural progression or pangs of whimsy as the Wilder edition did. Johnny Depp did not manage this, his gluttonous display of CGI party tricks is so far the worst of the trio of chocolate-related factory offerings. Wonka is neither good nor bad – it is the neutral ground to which modern audiences can consume, understand and nod along. Fine, fine work. Meritable achievements in which Hugh Grant displays what it means to cash a paycheck. He has lifted the curtain so clearly on what one must do to survive, it is rather noble in a way.  

To see him orange in colour and green in hair is a tremendous privilege. Wonka offers it and a few other tricky experiences which were doomed because of the promotional material and subsequent press junket. Grant and Dakota Johnson for Madame Webb have been cutthroat in their honesty – and for Wonka, it means an acceptance, from filmmakers and audiences, that this is more a vehicle for Chalamet than anyone else. Rightly so. He is the main man and apart from a few awkward jitters in his conviction to whimsy, his sterilised approach to good fun, Wonka gets away with it. With its hooks firmly in nostalgia, it is far to see how much of Wonka is keen to carve its own narrative. Off the back of cues and sounds from the original, the whistled Pure Imagination or the iconic attire, but it does much good with Paterson Joseph as Slugworth and a few familiar British comedy faces.  

Paul King of Paddington directing fame does what he does best – takes a quintessentially British vehicle and stuffs it full of the Sunday teatime charm Londoners have come to find twee and of a Northern variety. It feels a bit sickening at times that the bear-peddling King has got his hands on material which felt far more sinister when first adapted. This one has nothing of the sort aside from some sloppy flicks of a cane from Chalamet and the bright colours which now infect British cinema, replacing its heart in the process. Not all bad but very little of interest. Wonka convinces a race of tiny orange people to stay in his army of trade with the promise of free chocolate. We would all fall to his charm, though Wonka has little.