Wonka (2023)

Nostalgia is where creativity goes to die- Hubert Vigilla after seeing WONKA

Let me get this out of the way, WONKA is okay but it’s wildly uneven (I’ll explain in minute).  The cast is great, the songs are mostly awful. Despite what follows I kind of like the film but I’m incredibly pissed at it because it should have been great and it isn’t.

The film begins when Wonka returns to land after seven years at sea. He wants to sell his chocolate in the city. However the big three chocolate makers want to stop him. Ending up an indentured slave to the owner of a flop house after one night, he plots his escape. However despite the help of the other slaves, including a young girl named Noodle, Wonka has to battle to make his way and to fight off an Oompah Loompa who was tasked with getting the cocoa beans he stole.

Hubert’s statement above illustrates what, aside from some really not good songs, is wrong with the film. Leaning into, if not bludgeoning in connections with WILLIE WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, WONKA is a film that is afraid to be its own thing. Everything must have a call back to the 1970 film. It makes this clear as before even the opening credits start the song Pure Imagination starts. It’s a theme that is repeated all through the film. Most of the references are not needed, nay, don’t belong. After the first one or two produce a smile, it just becomes tiring simply because they are used to get a reaction or as unneeded punctuation. They take you out of the moment  because suddenly we are asked notice the call back. (If you want to know how nostalgic callbacks should be used consider how they are used in the recent GODZILLA MINUS ONE where they largely ignore its use until it can be used for maximum effect, such as when the original music cues hit the soundtrack)

What kills me is that the call backs aren’t needed. The best parts of the film are all the new stuff, the new characters, the new situations,  not to mention Timothy Chalamet’s and Hugh Grant’s new interpretations of the characters make the film soar. If they hadn’t worked so hard to make connections  and just made the film standalone this would have been a classic like the directors PADDINGTON- this is especially since true since many of the connections require changing up the story in the original film ala the Ooompa Loompahs who are not rescued but hunting Wonka.

This film feels like the producers thought the only way this would work was to make connections- but they didn’t have to since you have a few characters and a clean slate- and when the director had a clean slate as in PADDINGTON he created magic. Clearly this is the last gasp of Hollywood creativity since you can see the ship of creativity sinking under the weight of studio executives insisting on manufacturing bullshit nostalgia as a selling point. ( As Hubert said to me “why can’t the studios realize that I have moved on from where I was when I fell in love with Wonka. I’ve grown. If I wanted the original nostalgia I would have watched the original film")

What pisses me off is that every time the film gets traction and begins to soar (and don’t get me wrong there are truly glorious moments in this film) the film plummets as a result of the nostalgia or a weak song.  

Speaking of the songs, and in an effort to be generous the films songs might have worked if the film didn’t keep referencing Pure Imagination. Why keep referencing a classic when you are surrounding it with what is at middle of the road Broadway filler songs. There is only one good new number (whatever the one starts with Wonka as a waiter) and the rest are clunky.  And if they aren’t clunky, their integration is such that they rarely flow into the action but stutter step into it. It always breaks the mood which is why only the waiter song and Pure Imagination work.

My thought is this should have been on Broadway where mediocre songs and fake nostalgia sell.

And lest you think I hate the film I have to say there are great things in it. Chalamet makes Wonka his own. Hugh Grant is hysterical. The sequences with Sally Hawkins are great. I loved the giraffe. The finale  of the film- particularly when Wonka sings Pure Imagination while taking Noodle to the library and visualizing the future factory made me cry. (The nostalgia for the “future” events is where it belonged.)

There is great stuff here, but there is a lot of disappointment.

Should you see it?

If you liked the original film give it a shot. Just expect a bumpy ride.