Wonka is a prequel to 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with Timothée Chalamet stepping into the top hat. Paul King directs and co-wrote the screenplay with Simon Farnaby. The film runs 117 minutes.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
A Chocolatier With No Shop and No Money
The story opens with Willy Wonka reaching the Galéries Gourmet, full of ideas about opening his own chocolate shop. He gets steered into Mrs. Scrubitt’s boarding house by her co-worker Bleacher and signs a predatory contract he cannot read. The next day he sells “hoverchocs,” candies that make the eater fly. Rival chocolatiers Arthur Slugworth, Gerald Prodnose and Felix Fickelgruber have his earnings confiscated by Officer Affable for selling without a shop. Unable to pay the contract’s fees, Wonka ends up working in Scrubitt’s launderette alongside her foster daughter Noodle and fellow captives Abacus Crunch, Piper Benz, Larry Chucklesworth and Lottie Bell.
The Chocolate Cartel and a Vault
Crunch, once an accountant for Slugworth, tells Wonka the Cartel keeps a secret vault of chocolate used for bribes to hold power. Wonka and the laundry workers start selling chocolate through the city’s storm drains to dodge the police. An Oompa Loompa named Lofty, played by Hugh Grant through motion capture, keeps stealing Wonka’s chocolates, seeking payback for cocoa beans Wonka took from Loompaland. Wonka finally opens his shop. The Cartel has Scrubitt sabotage the chocolates with Yeti sweat and unnamed poisons. Customers are disfigured, the shop is destroyed, and Wonka agrees to leave town by boat in exchange for the Cartel clearing everyone’s debts.
Chalamet’s Wonka Is Childlike, Not Broken
King has said he offered Chalamet the part with no audition after watching the actor’s high school performances on YouTube, which showed his vocal and dancing skills. Chalamet has described his approach as the inverse of the Wonka audiences know: “It was a total inverse of that Willy Wonka with a demented look in his eye that we all know. How would that character have started, to land in a place where he’s still childlike but sort of broken?” Christopher Gattelli choreographed the musical numbers. Neil Hannon wrote the original songs and Joby Talbot composed the score.
The Numbers Behind Wonka
- Premiere: November 28, 2023, at Royal Festival Hall, London
- Runtime: 117 minutes
- Director: Paul King
- Writers: Simon Farnaby, Paul King
- Genres: Comedy, Family, Fantasy
- Score: 6.6 of 10
What Works and What Doesn’t
The cast is deep. Olivia Colman plays Scrubitt, Keegan-Michael Key plays the Chief of Police, and Rowan Atkinson plays Father Julius, a cleric leading chocoholic monks in league with the Cartel. Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas and Mathew Baynton fill out the Cartel. Sally Hawkins plays Wonka’s late mother.
That is a lot of talent spent on a plot that keeps Wonka running. The vault, the drains, the sabotage, the boat — each beat resets him to zero. A prequel has to explain how its hero becomes the figure we know, but Wonka spends most of its 117 minutes keeping him from becoming anything.
The songs and the Oompa Loompa are the film’s best argument for itself. Grant’s Lofty carries a real grievance over the cocoa beans taken from Loompaland, and the film later turns him into Wonka’s ally rather than a villain to defeat.
Wonka is a pleasant film that never risks much. It looks right, it sounds right, and Chalamet is game. What it lacks is the edge that made the 1971 film stick.
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