Well, there’s chocolate, and there’s chocolate! Only Wonka’s makes your confidence sky-rocke-let! Yet another Willy Wonka movie was released this December; an age-old movie reinvented yet again, this time starring Timothée Chalamet. Come with us, and you’ll see our review and rating of this movie!
To set the scene, we start by seeing Willy Wonka arriving at a port in a new city; singing about a new opportunity to sell his chocolate. By the song’s end, Wonka has lost all of his money AKA “sovereigns” due to city lifes pressures and new situations. He is forced to spend the night in “Scrubbit & Bleachers”, a laundromat, for supposedly one sovereign, but he’s scammed into having to pay thousands because he couldn’t read the terms and conditions. He spends the rest of the movie attempting to work it off by sneaking out of the laundromat with the help of the four others imprisoned in the laundromat’s basement to sell his chocolate. The three other competing chocolatiers in the town square are trying to get rid of him, so Wonka is forced to come up with ways to evade the police, who are on the corrupt chocolatiers’ side. Eventually, Willy prevails and collects enough money to open up a shop in the square.
After one booming day of success, Wonka realizes that the other chocolatiers poisoned his chocolate, making it seem like he was trying to harm his customers. Finally caught by the police, Willy is cast off and swears to never make chocolate again. He is told that his friends at the laundromat will be freed, so he agrees and boards the ship, only to find out that an explosion will soon go off. Wonka realizes it’s just another trick and jumps off the ship. Filled with a newfound sense of determination, he heads back to Scrubbit’s to break his friend Noodle out. Wonka, Noodle and the rest of the laundromat gang devise a triumphant plan to prove the other chocolatiers guilty. In the end, Willy Wonka is able to start his chocolate factory with the support of his friends, the Oompa Loompas, and all the townspeople.
The newest movie was also a musical, another way the three movies are similar. The songs aren’t the same, but the nostalgic spirit it gives the movies is. While watching this movie, the cheery tunes and fun lyrics make you feel like a kid again. Starting from the beginning with opening song “Hatful of Dreams”, the songs tell a story and transport you into the magical and whimsical world of Willy Wonka. Every tune in the movie will have you singing for weeks. In the middle of the movie when we are introduced to an Oompa Loompa, his catchy theme song is almost the same as the other movies, but with different lyrics that apply to the plot. Finally, to close out the movie, Timothee Chalamet sings his rendition of “Pure Imagination” featured in the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka in 1971. Originally sung with a kind of mysterious and ominous tone, Chalamet makes the song sound very nostalgic, ending the movie with an emotional feel.
The movie itself was different from the other two movies of Wonka’s story. Other than that it had Willy Wonka, his love for creating chocolate, and an Oompa Loompa, it was nothing like either of the previous movies. The movie went back to Willy’s roots, creating a reason for why he wanted to make it in the chocolate industry: his mother. She told him she would be right there beside him when he shared chocolate with the world.
This was not in either of the previous movies, as they were based on his life after becoming a successful chocolatier. The reason he chose the path he did in the other two was in spite of his dad, who was a judgemental dentist who banned Willy from eating chocolate. Another difference between the movies is the creation of the backstory of how Wonka was able to gain the help of the Oompa Loompas. In the first two movies, the Oompa Loompas were already working in his factory and we see that originally Wonka had traveled to their home and made an agreement with the chief Oompa Loompa to have them work for him. In “Wonka”, Shorty Pants who first introduced himself as Lofty was stealing chocolate back from Willy for stealing his cocoa beans.
Overall, we think “Wonka” was an 8/10 film. The musical aspect made the movie really come alive and engage the audience. The plot itself was a reinvention of the other Willy Wonka movies, even though it had some inconsistencies, it was still a very good movie. All of the actors played their parts amazingly, and the comedic scenes were plentiful. Timothee Chalamet was the perfect person to play this modern rendition of Willy Wonka, and the supporting cast members worked into the film wonderfully. If you found this article informative, consider going to see the movie in theaters.
