REVIEW #330 Wonka (2023)

Armed with a hatful of Dreams and young Willy Wonka aims to change the world, one delicious piece of chocolate at a time!

At the very heart of Wonka is a story of friendship and the message to always follow your dreams because after all “everything good in this world started with a dream” and that heartfelt core certainly made me more forgiving of its overly silly humour. Now, that style of comedy may really work for some but for me it’s probably my least favourite style of comedy, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the movie and laugh along with the rest of the audience, i did! It just means that unfortunately there’s a certain ceiling as to how high I rate it. Wonka was almost a pantomime at times, that’s probably the best way I can describe my take on it. The songs were pretty catchy and it flexed in the old with the new very well, ending with the iconic song to wrap everything up nicely. Timothee Chalamet was great as Willy Wonka and he captured all of his quirkiness and optimism that you would expect from a young version of the character. His chemistry with Calah Lane, who played Noodle, really drove home that theme of friendship and was the glue that held all of the plot elements together in my opinion.

I must admit from the trailer I thought I’d hate this film, the style, along with what seemed like the absolute butchering of the ‘oompa loompa’s’ made me extremely pessimistic. But fortunately they won me over in that regard, Hugh Grant actually stole the show in the scenes he was in! A vastly different take on the small orange creatures for sure, but one that worked and had everyone in the cinema laughing. Will there be a sequel? I certainly hope so because I’d like to see how their partnership blossomed after that. To conclude my review id simply say this movie is a bunch of silly fun, nothing too complicated, simple punchlines and even simpler songs but it did seem to work and I enjoyed myself. So I guess the film served its purpose, even if, at times, it was a little too silly for my liking. Made a day of it with chocolate making in Edinburgh beforehand which set the mood perfectly! 

Overall (7.5/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan