mario sen

If you are a bit old school and are expecting something with the quality of a Wizard of Oz, or a West Side Story, or Sweeney Todd… you may be a bit disappointed. Rogers and Hammerstein this ain’t. As much as Neil Hannon, the composer has tried to recreate the style of old time musicals, the songs are weak and pretty uninteresting. The lyrics seem forced and hard to verbalize comfortably. This is not helped by the lackluster singing voice of Timothee Chalamet, and many of the other characters too, who although they might be fine for humming a ditty, don’t have that ability to project out of the screen the way the greats did. So… musically weak, and a plot line that seems to drone on endlessly with the same one liner about how the bad guys won’t let Wonka make chocolates, yeah, yeah, we get the picture. Think of the original story, which is fairly simple in concept, and yet so full of interesting and original ideas. In this “prequel” there is a discrepancy in logic between the “magic” of certain things like disappearing in and out of manholes, which is given a realistic explanation , and the unexplained magic of chocolate that makes you fly. Why? Where did Wonka learn these things? There is no history here that makes us understand how he became such a magical person… other than a vague promise made by his mother, over which I could not understand his obsession… is she dead or is she alive? I, personally, had expected to learn more about the beginnings of his magical abilities. Having said that, there were some cute moments and some decent performances from some of the older actors - Olivia Coleman, Jim Cater, and of course the ever humorous Rowan Atkinson. And the general look and feel of the sets and cinematography was stunning, as most Hollywood stuff seems to be these days. I may be being super critical, so take my opinion with a grain of salt if choosing a suitable movie for your kids, I’m sure they will be entertained for an hour and a half. But I will say that I recently saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the TV, a movie I wouldn’t normally include as one of the great musicals, and yet I found the songs and performances Dick Van Dyke, Benny Hill… of course. to be far superior to those in Wonka. To summarize, in general quality Wonka is one or two levels below something you might cherish 25 years on, as many middle agers now seem to do with the original Gene Wilder film. That slightly dark and dangerous quality of Wonka is altogether missing, but so is the subtlety of Wilder’s compassion.