‘Wonka’: Timothée Chalamet Bites Off More Than He Can Chew in This Dizzying Musical

They were all young once: Don Corleone and Darth Vader, Butch and Sundance, Hannibal and Leatherface, Maleficent and Cruella. And long before he was the world’s best-known chocolatier and distributor of life-changing golden tickets, William “Willy” Wonka was just a twentysomething kid with a top hat, a sweet tooth, and a dream.

For decades, we could only guess how the bright-eyed lad became the candymaker-in-chief. This is where Wonka comes in. A prequel that seeks to both fill in the blanks regarding Roald Dahl’s eccentric sugar pimp and give this generation the Willy they deserve, this look back at the origin story of a kid’s-movie icon is determined to win you over by wearing you down. We all know that every buzzy sugar rush is inevitably followed by a crash. This movie somehow makes you feel as if you’re experiencing both the high and the low at the same time.

We will find out in due time how Wonka went from obsessing over confectionaries to cornering the market, and how, after years of scouring exotic landscapes for ingredients and inspiration, he landed in the big city in order to beat Big Chocolate at their own rigged game. Whoever is in charge of developing Dahl adaptations was wise to hire Paul King. A British director operating in the no man’s land between tweeness and glee more associated with other brand-name auteurs, he’s best known for gifting the Paddington movies with a sense of formalism and waggish glints of whimsy.

And from the moment that Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) steps off the ship and is liberated of his meager savings — this is a metropolis, after all — you’re whisked into a world of impeccable production design, well-choreographed citizen dancers, and high-comic caricatures. The city is a bit like Dickensian London crossed with prewar Paris, but the busy assemblage of movement, musical numbers, color, and comic froth basically make this a cartoonish composite we’ll call Kingstown. Come with me, and you’ll see, a world of preeeee-faaaaabrica-tion….

Still, the film needs King’s touch and his sensibility to steer it out of I.P.-sploitation waters and into something more imaginative and pointed. Having finally come to the promised land known as the Galleries Gourmet, Wonka plans to sell his wares while singing his way into the hearts of consumers and connoisseurs. It will not be as easy as this naïf in the natty coat believes it to be. First off, there’s a $3 penalty for public daydreaming, which is a financial deathblow for an idealist who wants to change the world. Second, his presence does not make the trinity of the Chocolate Industrial Complex — Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas), and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton), who vomits at the mention of the word “poor” —  particularly happy or charitable. Third, our man is scammed by Bleacher and Mrs. Scrubbit (Tom Davis and Olivia Colman), who run a joint boarding house and laundry. A lack of attention to a contract’s fine print lands Wonka in a heap of trouble, which means he’s forced to work off his enormous debt to his landlords one soiled bedsheet at a time. Welcome to capitalism, Willy.

He’s joined in this sudsy prison by his fellow tenants Abacus (Jim Carter), Lottie (Rakhee Thakrar), Piper (Natasha Rothwell), Mr. Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher) — and a young girl named Noodle (Calah Lane). This urchin had tried to warn Wonka, but he was too busy thinking of new ways to get his merchandise to the people. Noodle also becomes his taste-tester, his business partner, his accomplice in getting out of endless scrubbing and, most importantly, the character who brings out the more human side to Wonka. Their friendship is the heart of the film, largely thanks to Lane — she’s a natural in a film not filled with many natural elements.

Everything else, however, seems powered by the movie’s adrenal glands, including Keegan-Michael Key’s chocoholic cop, Rowan Atkinson’s noxious priest, Willy’s mother issues, a handful of wordplay-heavy songs by the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, some musical MGM-style numbers, a runaway giraffe, a couple of stabs at class warfare — “the greedy beat the needy” — and, dear god, Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa named Lofty. (King used the actor’s knack for straight-faced silliness so well in Paddington 2 that it pains you to watch what surely was a riot on the page fall flat onscreen.) It’s all very exciting when it’s not completely exhausting. At least you can’t say Wonka is a generic legacy-property cash grab.

You can say that there is a bit of a hole in the middle of this bon bon, however, and it’s distinctly Wonka-shaped. Ever since Timothée Chalamet blipped onto the greater public’s radar with Call Me by Your Name in 2017, the young actor has proven to be versatile, charismatic, remarkably unselfconscious, and able to both amplify and weaponize his attractiveness (see: Lady Bird or, better yet, Bones and All). He’s also managed to make a strong case that his name now belongs above movie titles, with genuine stardom just a few more sci-fi blockbusters and/or rock-star biopics away.

But Chalamet started out as a bona fide theater kid, and it’s that bit of backstory that keeps coming to mind when you watch Wonka. Mostly because the chops he would have honed around that time would have come in mighty handy here if they were somehow able to translate to the screen. And yet, despite having a nice enough voice, a lightness on his feet, and solid comedic timing, he somehow seems completely wrong for this part. There is little to no Wonka in his Wonka. There really doesn’t seem to be much of anybody up there, oddly enough. It isn’t that we wanted the ghost of Gene Wilder to somehow be channeled through his performance — Chalamet has big I.P. shoes to fill just being there, so he wisely steers clear of the Wilder side of things. Not to mention that the movie is busy enough on its own, which maybe meant underplaying the craziness simply for contrast.

But having a void where a lead character should be, even if it’s “just” a fictional chocolatier that’s captivated the hearts of millions of readers and moviegoers (as he’s simultaneously scared them; look how coldly he handled that Augustus situation!), isn’t the solution either. You’re thankful that King injects a sense of kindness, a kookiness, and the care to make this something besides leftover Dahl parts. Yet you wish that Chalamet was bringing something, anything, to what too often feels like character karaoke. He’s not bad, just blank. Which is enough to make you feel like Wonka is over long before it’s actually over. Let’s just say the gobstopping is anything but everlasting here.

From Rolling Stone US.