Rent Wonka (2023)

Tooth-rottingly Sickly-sweet Backstory stuffed with Backstories & new mediocre music/silly songs - Wonka review by PV

OK so, this is really a kids' film, I suppose BUT will they be transfixed by it? I doubt it, even though it tries EVER SO HARD to please them, and I mean very VERY VERRYYYY hard - ticks all the boxes and has funny accents and costumes and animals and all, and more. All done by the book, with goodies, baddies, set pieces, lush scenery in a fantasy town (based on Oxford with the Bridge of Sighs of Hertford College and Radcliffe Camera/Bodleian library, and the Old Town Tower in Prague for the church), and the usual three-act structure of a QUEST with a big setback before the final triumph. But it just has no ZING to it, no SPARKLE, despite the great cast and immense cost. Chemistry, I suppose.

It even adds 2 top songs from the early 1970s US film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The 2 best ones - Imagination and the Oompa Loompa song, each cowritten by David Bowie's great hero. Anthony Newley with Leslie Bricusse who died aged 90 in 2021 - they also wrote the song FEELING GOOD for another musical of theirs, recorded later by Nina Simone. I have always liked the Divine Comedy and Neil Hannon BUT the new songs here are just mediocre and unmemorable - just like the stage musical of Charlie I saw in 2013, which also lifted the memorable early 1970s Imagination song for the finale. The final theme song A Hatful of Dreams just about cuts the mustard BUT it is no match for the song IMAGINATION.

But it all somehow falls as flat as the mediocre unmemorable melodies. Not sure why. The acting is fine, and the casting too (though the usual diverse casting of now is yawnfully evident). I especially liked Tom David as Mr Bleacher, he was great in superb Channel 4 sitcom THE CURSE, and also Simon Farnaby as Basil the Zoo Keeper, he is great in DETECTORISTS and many other TV comedy shows).

Best of all I liked Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa (who gave me my only laugh during the whole movie) BUT kids should know that orange-faced green-haired people were ONLY invented for the early 1970s US film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the book there is NO description at all in the version we all read. In the original Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, only published in the USA where Roald Dahl lived in 1964, the Oompa-Loompas are described as little black African pygmies. It was changed in later editions after criticism by a journalist/reviewer at the time of civil rights. of course if one REA:LLY wants to be right-on woke and pc, one can cite this whole film and story as cultural appropriation as chocolate was taken from South America by invaders from Spain/Portugal. That is how to get yourself tied in the multiple tangled knots of wokery. Plenty of fatshaming in this film too, and mocking the poor, and casual violence - as befitting the cartoon characters here.

So 2 stars from me. I doubt children would give it more. They'll probably demand to watch the US film WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971), apparently a Christmas Day traditional film on TV in the USA. In the UK, my generation did not see it until we were adults BUT we had the book, which is better.

Leaves a bad taste in the mouth - Wonka review by LC

This is a disappointingly toothless and unnecessary origin story, which seems to have no reason to exist other than as an exercise in milking as much cash as possible out of an intellectual property. Willy Wonka himself has been stripped of any dark side (no terrifying boat-ride madness or glee at naughty children's comeuppance here), and the generic storyline shines little new light on his character. The story is set in France, but for some reason seems to be populated almost exclusively by either plummy-voiced upper-class English or cockneys. Olivia Colman does a solid comedy turn, and Hugh Grant makes a surprisingly good Oompa Loompa, but this is ultimately a pointless exercise that just trades off the goodwill of the original film.