I didn’t like Paul King’s “Wonka,” it all felt very cloying and Timothee Chalamet’s performance was incredibly annoying. However, I seem to be in the minority.
The embargo has lifted on “Wonka” and its 79% fresh rating, and 7.5 average score, based on 59 reviews, is surprising. On Metacritic, it has a 67 Metascore with 27 reviews logged in.
“Wonka” is filled with sugary sentimantality. It’s overtly sweet. Did I mention it’s a musical? The trailers tried to hide that as much as possible — Chalamet’s singing, and performance, fall FLAT. It doesn’t help that the story being told is clumsily conventional.
As bad as Chalamet is in this one, I don’t buy what The Film Stage is saying by calling his performance “near-fatal” for his career. Chalamet has ‘Dune 2’ and a Bob Dylan biopic (“Going Electric”) on the horizon — he’ll be just fine, but this is a career misstep.
I will say that “Wonka” is visually gorgeous. King’s success with the ‘Paddington’ movies was no fluke. The budget for “Wonka” was $125 million and it sure looks like they spent every single penny of it on the production design.
King’s staging is also very well realized, but that’s all useless when the story being told is strenuously icky. It tries, really hard, to be charming and playful. If you pay attention, you can even hear King behind the camera desperately pleading for you to love his movie.
What you’ll get with “Wonka” is something safe and family-friendly. A whimsical tale about a young man who wants to open a chocolate shop. It bears no resemblance to 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” which had Gene Wilder‘s now iconic performance.
No one can really compare to Wilder and the manic energy he brought to the original Wonka. Johnny Depp went gonzo with his performance in Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and, quite honestly, King’s version makes Burton’s look like a masterpiece.
“Wonka” is banking on holiday audiences to show up as it opens right before Christmas on December 15th, 2023.