BEFORE: Natasha Rothwell carries over from "Wish". Last night's film and tonight's film share a few other things in common, they both have one-word titles that begin with "W", they're both about working toward your dreams, and they both played at the theater where I work during calendar year 2023. I can't recall if they were guild screenings or what, but I definitely managed both screenings and was unable to watch the films. I just put them on the list, and so it took me about 6 to 8 months to get to both of them.
Right now I'm pulling extra shifts at the theater because it's a venue for the Tribeca Film Festival - I was only supposed to work 3 days of the 12-day event, but then I got assigned to the load-in night and also covered two shifts for a sick co-worker, so before it's over I'll have worked 6 days at the festival, and some of these were LONG shifts, so I'm pretty exhausted now. I fell asleep during "Wish" the other night, and it's not even a 90-minute movie. I've been getting home at 11 pm some nights, and then after Late Show and Late Night monologues I'll start a movie, and, well, if it doesn't hold my interest I'm probably going to fall asleep in the recliner.
Wednesday morning I slept in a bit, got to my other job at noon instead of 11 am, and so I was a bit fresher when it came time to watch "Wonka", I made it through the whole film, then passed out shortly after it was over. Well, by Sunday the festival will be over, and my schedule's going to lighten up, so I'll catch up on sleep next week. Maybe I can still maintain my movie schedule until Father's Day.
THE PLOT: With dreams of opening up a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.
AFTER: Some might say this was an unnecessary prequel to "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (the 1971 movie) or to the remake, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005). Either way, it hardly matters - but do you think Timothee Chalamet looks more like Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp? Oddly, I think he looks like some combination of the two, meaning he could grow to resemble either one as he ages. Hmmm. But was this necessary? About as necessary as that film they made with James Franco as the young Wizard of Oz, and this similarly tells Wonka's back-story, bringing him to eventual fame as a chocolatier, only to become a hermit later and run that contest with the golden tickets that we all know about.
But I'll go out on a limb here and say that this backstory IS necessary, because we need to know how and why Willy Wonka became so weird, so messed-up that he would invite five kids into his usually off-limits chocolate factory and then torture four of them horribly, so they'd get burned up in the chocolate room or turned into a giant blueberry that needed to be juiced, or shrunk down to the size of a few TV pixels. Sure, the kids were all brats with bad habits who needed to be taught life lessons, but what gave Willy Wonka the right to torture them? More to the point, who hurt HIM when he was young?
Well, just about everyone, with a couple exceptions. The main villains here are the three members of the chocolate cartel - Slugworth, Prodnose and Fickelgruber. Slugworth was mentioned in the previous two movies, the other ones might be new characters. These evil men have banded together to stockpile delicious chocolate, and release it in watered-down versions to the public at sky-high prices. And when Wonka hits the scene selling, well, much better choccies, the cartel members sic the local constables on him and try to drive him out of town.
But Wonka also learns hard lessons when he first hits town with seven silver coins to his name, as soon as he gets off the ship and reaches the middle of town there's a boy shining his shoes, and people in the market are charging him for merchandise he "broke", so there go some of his coins. Then there's a starving mother in need of food, and he gives her a few coins because he's a good person, and his last coin falls through a hole in his pocket and down a drain. Well, that went fast. He ends up seeking lodging at a combination laundry & inn, they won't charge him rent until the following day, so he'll have a chance to raise some money - but they also make him sign a contract with a ton of fine print, and the next day he's in deep for phony fees and mini-bar charges, to the tune of thousands. So, like several other poor souls, he's forced to work in the laundry, day after day until his "debt" is paid off. It's a valuable life lesson, the world is full of people trying to screw you out of your money. Someday, when he's got his chocolate shop running, he'll get payback and teach all of the bad people something...
He remains optimistic, somehow, with the help of Noodle, a poor girl who also works in the laundry, and she helps him sneak out during the day so he can sell his chocolate and make enough money to both get free of the laundry and also open his dream chocolate shop (well, come on, we know someday he has a whole factory, so it's kind of "Rogue One" inevitable that his mission will ultimately succeed....).
There's still the cartel to deal with, however, and also the police that they control. Plus Wonka says there's a little orange man with green hair who sneaks into his room at night and steals all of his chocolate, so that's a problem, each morning he has nothing to sell. If only he could catch the Oompa... I mean, the little orange man, he could maybe reason with him and get him to stop stealing the chocolate. Noodle, meanwhile, is convinced that Willy himself is stress-eating the sweet treats at night, therefore he doesn't really WANT to succeed. But nothing could be further from the truth, Wonka needs to fulfill his mission, because he thinks it will bring his dead mother back. Umm, OK, sure, there's a lot to unpack there.
Plenty of shout-outs to the original 1971 film - there's a message on gold paper inside a chocolate bar, there's a contract with a ton of fine print, and of course the pre-cursor to the giant river of chocolate. Which is all fine, because it means that this all properly fits in with and sets up the original film. And the songs here hint at the songs there. It's fine, it's all fine.
Also starring Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key (last heard in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Paterson Joseph (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Matt Lucas (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Mathew Baynton (last seen in "Hereafter"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Spencer"), Rowan Atkinson (last seen in "Scooby-Doo"), Jim Carter (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Olivia Colman (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Rich Fulcher (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Rakhee Thakrar, Tom Davis (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (ditto), Tim Fitzhigham (ditto), Simon Farnaby (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Charlotte Ritchie, Ellie White, Freya Parker (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Sophie Winkleman, Murray McArthur (last seen in "The Northman"), Tracy Ifeachor, Isy Suttie, Phil Wang, Colin O'Brien, Gustave Die, Paul G. Raymond, Bertie Caplan, Matilda Tucker, Rufus Jones (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Susie Fairfax, Ian Bartholomew, Lola Shepelev, Michael Abubakar (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Justin Edwards (last seen in "The Trip to Greece"), Marina Bye (last seen in "Breathe"), Jane Bertish, Dominic Coleman (last seen in "Stuart: A Life Backwards"), Alison Pargeter (last seen in "Calendar Girls")
RATING: 8 out of 10 edible baskets
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