'Wonka' Review: Willy When He Was Young and Oh So Sweet – The New York Times

Youthful, sweeter and considerably much less bizarre than his prior display screen incarnations, the most recent Willy Wonka — performed by Timothée Chalamet — units off on his journey with a dream and a smile. For the following two hours, he retains smiling, whereas generally singing, type of dancing and concocting idiosyncratic treats like goodies salted with, as Willy explains, “the bittersweet tears of a Russian clown.” Known as hoverchocs, this explicit delectable sends its nibblers flying. Alas, they weren’t given out on the press screening so I remained earthbound.

Film franchises stay endlessly, it appears, therefore “Wonka,” a brand new musical origin story set in an earnest key in regards to the first enterprise ventures of the younger Willy. It’s a shiny, mild film — in palette and temperament — that’s filled with proficient performers who appear to be having a pleasing time, even when pretending to be meanies. Its most distinctive high quality is that it’s good, with scarcely a touch of the misanthropy that burbles via Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Manufacturing facility,” the 1964 greatest vendor that generated variations in assorted media, together with two earlier movies and a Broadway musical. (This film has totally different music.)

Dahl’s novel and its two movie variations characteristic an impoverished boy, Charlie, “ smart loving youngster” who pays a life-changing go to to a chocolate manufacturing facility owned by the mysterious Willy Wonka. Directed by Paul King, “Wonka” turns again the clock to when Willy was a striver with near-empty pockets and a suitcase stuffed with enchantments. After years of crusing the world, he pursues his toothsome goals in a Euro-ville pastiche, with a vaulted buying arcade and a plaza giant sufficient to carry massive musical numbers. He quickly encounters hurdles within the type of a cartel and a hotelier, Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Colman), who — in a plotline that mirrors one within the novel — hoodwinks visitors into servitude.

“Wonka” has songs, previous and new (essentially the most memorable are from Mel Stuart’s 1971 movie), dance numbers, a river of chocolate and no surprises. Amongst its least stunning sights is Chalamet, an anodyne dreamboat who delivers an enthusiastic efficiency with a reedy tenor and awkward kicks, his floppy hair shimmying beneath Willy’s high hat. Because the title suggests, Willy is decidedly the star: He enters perched atop a ship’s mast, an elevated place that he retains all through. And whereas he quickly has a toddler sidekick, a regulation charmer known as Noodle (Calah Lane), the youngest of Mrs. Scrubbit’s indentured minions, it’s Willy who now successfully has the position of the wide-eyed harmless as soon as performed by Charlie.