Film Review - Wonka (2023)

Wonka is the new film by Paddington director Paul King and Timothee Chalamet stars as a young Willy Wonka who travels by boat to sell his magical chocolate in France only to find himself stuck in a laundrette run by Olivia Coleman, he also faces stiff competition from rival chocolate sellers (Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas and Matthew Baynton) who want to keep all the chocolate sales to themselves.

Going into Wonka I was apprehensive mainly because Gene Wilder made Willy Wonka his own in the 1971 film (which Warner Brothers actually inherited from Paramount as it was such a flop for them in 1971 that a few years later they sold the film to WB who then turned it into the cult classic it became) that when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp made their film in 2005 it was a near total disaster but Paddington proved King could do great family films so was this a nice bite of chocolate or too sweet for some teeth.

Well this is happily the former as this film is terrific fun in a cinema, for much of the time I had a big smile on my face and was caught up in the sweet nature of the film, Chalamet (soon to be seen as Paul Muadib Atredies, Duke of Arakkis in Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters) much like Tom Blyth recently did in the Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes manages to find a way to make his Wonka his own character while also giving you enough hints of the Gene Wilder version the character would later become.

He also has a great supporting cast to work with as well, Coleman/Joseph/Lucas and Baynton make for a great group of villains and like Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant in the Paddington films they are so much fun to watch and it really makes me wish for the days when Disney Animation gave us great villains in their films, Sally Hawkins is always good to see and Keegan Michael-Key is a lot of fun as the police captain but the show stealer here is Hugh Grant as the Oompa Loompa Wonka comes across.

He's not in the film a huge amount but when he comes on screen I was grinning from ear to ear and at times thinking of the Grunka Lunka parody from the Futurama episode Fry and the Slurm Factory.

And lastly this movie is more of a musical than the previews showed you and the songs are quite good with a good mix of new songs and some old treats one of which made me emotional in my cinema seat while the other put a big smile on my face.

And so that was Wonka and it is some of the most fun I’ve had in a cinema all year, its fun/heartfelt/whimsical and so much more than I thought it would be, 4 out of 5.