Sickly Sweet

Whimsy doesn’t describe the singularly scrumdiddlyumptious mind of Roald Dahl; the renowned children’s author was too dark a writer to fully commit to the saccharine. Not so for the empty-calorie confection Wonka, a defanged reimagining of Dahl’s celebrated chocolatier, giving him an origin story so thoroughly toothless you’d think sugar-induced cavities might have been the culprit.

Jettison your image of the dangerously anarchic figure from Dahl’s brilliant brat-attack book, or your memories of the delightful top-hatted chaos agent in the wildly psychedelic and mildly terrifying 1971 classic film adaptation. Do not expect Gene Wilder’s unimpressed deadpan misanthrope, let alone Johnny Depp’s Carol-Channing-inflected Anna Wintourian freakshow from Tim Burton’s soulless razzle-dazzle 2005 retooling.

WONKA ★★ (2/5 stars)
Directed by: Paul King
Written by: Simon Farnaby, Paul King
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant
Running time: 116 mins

What we have in Paul King’s genial prequel is ivory-skinned skinny boy Timothée Chalamet, an undeniably charismatic, impressively talented and very game actor doing his best to give our beloved Willy a wide-eyed, open-faced if slightly kooky veneer. Wonka as a naif? C’mon. It’s hard to swallow, no matter how sweet.

Why the incessant need to explain our favorite fictional character’s past lives? Burton preposterously gave Wonka a father—the chilly Dr. Wilbur Wonka, D.D.S.—and a sequence showing the birth of young Wonka’s chocolate obsession during an overly aggressive metal-mouthed, head-braced childhood. Oh, the agony of having a dentist for a parent!

In this latest eponymous outing, King and co-screenwriter Simon Farnaby concoct an even more fanciful beginning for Wonka. Turns out, instead of an emotionally unavailable dad, he had a perfectly doting single mom (Sally Hawkins) who, as a cook on a boat, introduced him to the art of candy-making—specifically the life-altering ecstasy of a chocolate bar. I’m not going to say that the secret ingredient is love, but yeah, it basically is.

That, plus whatever is in Wonka’s strange little suitcase that opens up to reveal a mini-chemical lab—vials and chemicals galore—which somehow pops out exactly one perfect confection. Not the most efficient or even believable way to make food, but fine. All of Wonka’s chocolate-making is effectively a tribute to his presumably dead mother. “Here we go, mama!” he keeps muttering under his breath whenever he needs to psych himself up for a big reveal. By the way, she even made a special wrapper for her chocolate, on which she wrote the family name with her own calligraphic flourish. Ohhh, so that’s why the packaging looks that way! Groan.

It all comes back to a happy childhood, as Wonka reveals in a song lyric. “I just wanted it to feel the way that it did when I was a kid,” he croons. Which itself is a sentiment that would probably have made Dahl vomit in cyanide-laced contempt. Based on his many bedazzling, heartbreaking, anguished, wonder-infused books, childhood was usually something to survive, not to celebrate. But I digress.

There is one other secret ingredient to Wonka’s wonderful treats: refined powder from a few cocoa beans of Ooma-Loompaland, the procurement of which triggered the film’s silly cat-and-mouse subplot involving Hugh Grant—sporting the orange complexion and green hairdo of the classic cinematic dwarf but somehow bedecked in the kind of sartorial splendor more associated with Downton Abbey. We learn his story when Grant bends over and literally farts out a flashback. Why? Because nothing matters. Or maybe farting out flashbacks is a specialty of Oompa-Loompas. Who knows. Also, apparently the act of shrinking Grant down to the size of a water bottle was less offensive than hiring a little person. Or having him fart out flashbacks. But, again, I need to stay on track.

The point is, Wonka is a self-admitted magician, and can conjure chocolate made with ingredients from the marshes of Peru, infused with tears from Russia and cherries from Japan and occasionally, God help us, Yeti sweat. Even when he’s tricked into signing a rapacious contract that locks him into servitude to a comically cruel laundress (Olivia Colman), he still manages to sneak out and sell a seemingly limitless amount of product that, again, he is apparently able to manufacture without any sort of…any sort of…what’s the word for it? Chocolate factory.

His competition: the chocolate cartel! Wonka is trying to set up shop in a fancy atrium-inflected mall called the Gallery Gourmet—think Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II—but a nefarious trio of rival chocolatiers scheme to keep him out of business. Wonka wants to make delicious chocolate so affordable that even the poor can buy it! The chocolate cartel’s partner in crime? A corrupt cleric and 500 chocoholic monks. Never a good look when the Catholic Church is addicted to shameful pleasure and hiding a massive secret from the rest of the world. Oh, by the way, everything takes place in a strange euro-pudding of a city, with a Giraffenhaus and an Opera de la Cité and British sovereigns for currency and a policeman with a Chicago accent. Am I once more off-topic? Sorry.

This misguided movie wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It throws obstacles in Wonka’s way which he could obviously side-step—because he’s a magician! He literally has magic powers. He doesn’t need money or a store or even most ingredients, despite the film’s best efforts to try and convince us that he does. In King’s contrived concoction, Wonka befriends an orphan named Noodle (Calah Lane), and we’re supposed to believe that this platonic relationship drives Wonka to be a better person and make the decisions that alter the course of his life. Cue the song “Sorry, Noodle.”

There are about a half-dozen musical numbers, by the way, cheery ditties with sometimes even clever lyrics. The whole experience is pleasant and amusing enough for a completely innocuous two hours. But none of it really makes any sense beyond the idea that chocolate is good and so are friendships. Wonka is the equivalent of dime-store candies made of the cheapest ingredients and wrapped in gaudy shiny foil. Might this prevaricating prequel stand the test of time, alongside Dahl’s incomparable works? Only in a world of pure imagination.