“Wonka” PEOPLE Review: Timothée Chalamet Stars as the World's Favorite Candy Man

This musical prequel to the beloved Gene Wilder film is sweet–and gooey

What's a Wonka? Why, it's a younger, earlier, nicer Willy Wonka, and it comes out of this magical machine right here — the Onka-Donka-Wonka Prequilizer! Come on, everyone, gather round — we’ll show you how it works!

Up top, you’ll observe, is a wide funnel. That's our starting point. Do you see? That's where you insert Willy Wonka.

"Which Willy Wonka?" you ask. Well, it can be the original one from the Roald Dahl book or the Gene Wilder one from the 1971 movie. Just not the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, the one with Anna Wintour hair in the 2005 movie. You already saw that Willy's childhood story in a flashback. Remember? He was a sad little boy whose dad was a dentist, and his dad made him wear huge braces that crucified his entire mouth. And the kid wasn't allowed to eat candy! Yuck. No thank you, Tim Burton!

Okay! Now we put Willy into the funnel — head or feet first, makes no difference. (Only don't forget the tall hat!) That's right, pack him in good! Now we pull down that big lever aaaaand—stand back! The body is sucked right in — shwoop! — then it begins making its way through dozens of looping pipes that squirgle, gurgle whistle and shriek. (Hold your ears! It’s louder than an MRI!)

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Now, see the plumes of purple smoke coiling up from from the vents? That’s the sign that even the teensiest hint of danger, adventure or scariness is being burned away — burned off like sin! And sure enough, that illuminated blue panel is blinking its message: DONE! SAFE! ALL GOOD! That means you don't have to worry about Willy Wonka trigger warnings ever again. No more little girls turning into blueberries! No more squirrels!

Got all that? Great! Now if we can all gather around the big exit chute —

Wow! Just look at all those clouds of pink cotton candy! Now the clouds are billowing apart like the waves that bear Venus on her half-shell, and when they clear we have — Timothée Chalomet, a dewy Willy Wonka who looks barely old enough to vote. Yummy! Yay!

Any questions?

Oh — you're a parent and you'd appreciate it if we drop all the sardonic whimsy and just get on with the usual review. Fine!

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Wonka is a lavish, cheery and benign family entertainment — directed by Paul King, best known for the adorable Paddington films — that clocks in at a reasonable 1 hour and 56 minutes. There are a number of musical numbers. These are bright and cheerful, even if most of the songs are exercises in finding fresh rhymes for the word "chocolate."

And Chalamet gives an absolutely lovely performance. Slender as a peppermint stick and endearingly sleepy-eyed,  he makes an unusually romantic Wonka. You may be slightly disturbed if you remember that he was also an alluringly sleepy-eyed, unusually romantic cannibal in Bones and All. But kids won't know that. He generates the soft, kindly glow of a Christmas-tree light, and in his slim burgundy topcoat he has the vintage pop glamour of a  Vivienne Westwood model.

Then there’s this unexpected bonus: Wonka has only one Oompa-Loompa, and he's played with amusing, disdainful hauteur by a CGI-altered Hugh Grant. He’s bright orange, stands about as high as a mason jar and wears a green barrister’s wig. He looks like a distinguished carrot. 

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As to the story, it's a jumble sale of bits and pieces from Dahl, Dickens and Mary Poppins.

We begin with Willy arriving in the big city to open a shop where he can sell his magically delicious bonbons, some of which trigger such joy on the palate that you float up into the air. His inspiration is his dear twee little mother (Sally Hawkins). Before dying, she assures Willy she’ll be by his side when he finally opens his store and embarks on the journey that will someday make him the world's greatest, most eccentric chocolatier. Willy, in his guileless innocence, actually believes her. It doesn't occur to him that the dead aren't like hard candies, preserved in a cellophane wrapper and readily available in a bowl or dish.

He lives in what fans of the Gene Wilder Wonka movie would call a world of pure imagination, but it could also be defined as a total disconnect from reality.

At any rate, the local chocolate cartel is determined to freeze Willy out, with the help of a corrupt constable (Keegan-Michael Key). The members of the cartel secretly congregate in a subterranean lair far beneath the local cathedral, where the main aisle is  lined with chanting, chocoholic monks.

Wonka, meanwhile, makes the mistake of checking into a hotel run by Mrs. Scrubett (Olivia Colman), a nasty, dangerous conniver, somewhere between Les Misérables’ Madame Thénardiers and Sweeney Todd’s Mrs. Lovett. She presents Willy with an astronomically unpayable bill and throws him below stairs, where he’ll be condemned to work away his life in a laundry along with other Scrubett victims. Nothing as bad as Oliver! — no one threatens to feed him cockroaches served in a canister— but still.

No worries, though. Everything turns out perfectly happilicious. And Willy's mother does show up — in a sense — so never mind what we just said about hard candies.

So: Is any of this so very different from the absurd, grab-bag felicity of director King's Paddington 2, where we were enchanted watching a teddy bear sing and dance in prison? If little Paddington had been played by Ben Whishaw as an actual presence rather than a voice, in fact, you'd have had Wonka.

But Chalamet's Wonka isn't a teddy bear, he's a human being, a sort-of adult, and we know his very peculiar future: Does it matter that we're never given so much as a glimmer of how this this young Wonka could evolve into Gene Wilder’s version, dubiously polite with occasional hints of madness, or Dahl’s, bursting with energy and chortlingly indifferent to the harsh moral punishment in store for the kids at his factory? (The book is Se7n for children.)

It does matter, actually, if only to prevent tooth decay from all that sugar.

Wonka is now playing in theaters.

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