Wonka
This has been out a long time now and kids and wife wanted to see it so we finally had a night for $5 Tuesday at the theater and it is miraculously still running.
Reviews seem very positive (80s critic and 90s audience on RT) and this one just did not work for me. I'm not sure what story they wanted to tell, it is 2 hours of largely ending up back where we started until we don't and everything gets a nice bow and we put Wonka in his main factory room (chocolate river one) from the original.
So ultimately it is an origin story with Wonka befriending either the salt of the downtrodden Earth or a band of wacky misfits or a perfectly assembled Ocean's Eleven heist team depending on which part of the movie we are in. He is a man with a dream that refuses to be crushed by a sometimes overly malicious 'real world'. His rise to success, which to me offers the only avenue for chocolate making fun or shenanigans is skimmed over almost entirely so that we can instead focus a huge chunk of time on a couple of laundry shop owners who trick needy travelers into servitude in a fashion that the Thenardiers of Les Mis thought to cruel to employ. The main action ends with a "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" silliness which then gives way to a letdown coda of an unnecessary plot point wrapup and then the aforementioned 'put the character into the thing you remember' moment in the Wonka factory.
The songs are on the whole solid. Not much to complain about there, but I'm not sure any of the new material will be a classic considering they lean heavily on a mildly reworked Pure Imagination to carry the whole soundtrack anyway. As always, things today sound much too 'polished in the studio' ala Glee and I prefer the sound of older musicals that seem like someone might actually be singing the song as the walk down the street, but that is admittedly a complaint shouted into the void, I doubt anyone will be returning more raw vocal work any time soon.
Chalamet overall works as a young Wonka, I liked him in the role. The rest of the good guy side characters were all fine, the comedian was a standout though. On the bad guy side, the rival chocolatiers were all very good characters, but again, their actions are malicious beyond a lighthearted fun that I think the movies should have gone with. Keegan Michael-Key and Rowan Atkinson being baddies paid off strictly through chocolate is...fine, but otherwise their characters didn't offer much of anything interesting.
Anyway, that's probably more thought that this deserves. It isn't Depp Wonka weird, but it really isn't any good either. I'll just watch the Wilder one again if I need more Wonka.
