Crafting an origin story for a character who doesn’t need one—and whose appeal in fact hinges, to a considerable extent, on his mysterious, inexplicable wondrousness—is not what one might call “pure imagination,” and yet here is Wonka, doing just that for . Yet despite chocolate being the script’s main topic of conversation, the film is never delectably enticing; its focus is less on mouth-watering confections than on frantic fancifulness and lame humor, both of which combine in the figures of Rowan Atkinson’s corrupt cleric and Keegan-Michael Key’s chief of police, two baddies whose price for doing the bidding of Slugworth, Ficklegruber and Prodnose is, you guessed it, chocolate.
Syrupy sentimentality is the order of the day, absent any of the unnerving weirdness that Wilder and Stuart brought to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Chalamet’s entrepreneur is simply a good-hearted, preternaturally confident kid, and thus completely unconvincing as a milky younger version of Wilder’s bitter adult Wonka. Worse, he doesn’t mesh with the rest of the movie; whereas everyone else is at least on the same cartoony wavelength, the actor seems to be operating on a slightly different plane, incapable of hitting either his comedic or poignant notes. It’s a sizeable misstep for Chalamet, and that’s without even taking into account his so-so singing voice—a shortcoming that, in fairness, plagues everyone involved in this affair, which believes that vocal talent isn’t a prerequisite for belting out (admittedly unremarkable) show tunes.
“The greedy beat the needy,” says Noodle on more than one occasion but Wonka is about as class-conscious as your average Snickers bar, and Wonka’s desire to “change the world” comes off as similar feel-good pap. The sole time King’s film doesn’t make one furiously gnash their teeth is during Hugh Grant’s brief appearances as a CGI’d Oompa-Loompa named Lofty who has a long-standing grudge against the chocolatier. Grant’s “little orange man” is a posh gentleman with a thieving heart, and just bizarre enough to provide a bit of faint enchantment. No surprise that he’s relegated to a few sight gags and a late bit of phoned-in deus ex machina heroism. However, he remains, relatively speaking, more interesting than all of Chalamet’s wan eccentricity, Lane’s cherubic blandness, and the cavalcade of computer-generated giraffes, flamingos, and cocoa geysers that dominate the proceedings.
Aiming for delightfulness and coming up with merely strained triteness, Wonka reconfirms the reliable pointlessness of prequels and the inimitability of true classics. Like an unwanted box of Valentine’s Day treats, its destiny is to be put on a shelf and promptly forgotten.
