Wonka arrives in the nameless city where this movie takes place (a delectable mash-up of Dickensian London and Bavarian cream), he immediately announces himself as a perfect mark for its most unsavory characters. In fact, he’s been so busy studying chocolate that he’s never learned how to read at all. It’s strange that he should still be so guileless after spending the last seven years traveling the globe in search of rare ingredients, but Willy is a bit too high on his own supply to see other people for what they are or read the room for information. Equipped with nothing but a burgundy coat full of chocolate and a bottomless hat full of dreams, our high-cheekboned hero sails into King and Simon Farnaby’s script convinced that the world is as sweet as the candy he plans to sell back to it at a discount. All the way down, down, down to the dingy hotel basement where a manboy inventor by the name of William Wonka ( Timothée Chalamet) finds himself trapped for 10,000 days after he can’t afford to pay his bill for a single night. Money may not trickle down, but cynicism does. More than just a sugary origin story about the power of love, “Wonka” is also a cautionary tale about what happens when a society entrusts its collective imagination to people who don’t have any of their own. But here, that familiar moral - as prevalent in our fiction as it is from our reality - is merely the pretext for a studio tentpole that isn’t afraid to put its money where its mouth is and take a sharper bite out of the hand that feeds it. It goes without saying that greed causes cavities, and that the pathologically upbeat Wonka inevitably teaches everyone he meets that chocolate, like all good things in life, tastes much sweeter when it’s shared. ![]() But if “Wonka” is a lot messier than either of its writer-director’s previous features, the reason it still feels like a holiday classic in the making is because the Scrooginess baked into its plot isn’t just lip service or something for its characters to overcome. Some of that simply boils down to the genius of King’s design, which suffuses every inch of his films with a sincerity that makes them special even when certain parts melt in your hands and not in your mouth. But if King’s ambitious follow-up to one of the greatest family movies ever made is much, much less demented than either of the previous attempts to bring Roald Dahl’s iconic chocolatier to the big screen, it’s also much - if only one “much” - richer than its gooey, frosting-dusted core might suggest. “ Wonka” definitely is that, don’t get me wrong not even the first “Paddington” had quite this much “Paddington 2” energy. ‘He Went That Way’ Trailer: Jacob Elordi Is an Unsuspecting Serial Killer in Road Trip Thriller And, sure, this musical take on modern fiction’s second-most frightening candyman might’ve been hard to stomach if it were just another “needy beat the greedy” tale about the warmth of kindness in a world that’s growing colder by the day. Of course, Hollywood is no stranger to the tastelessness of corporate hypocrisy, and Paul King’s big-hearted “ Wonka” is hardly the first holiday film that’s tried to make some money by selling audiences on the magic of giving it away. ![]() At the risk of overstating the political edge of a children’s story about an eccentric entrepreneur whose signature confections make customers float in the air before crapping live bugs out of their buttholes, there’s a delicious irony to the fact that Warner Bros.’ first big release since Discovery CEO David Zaslav (once again) canned a completed film in exchange for a $30 million tax write-off is an anti-capitalist fable set in a city run by a ruthless chocolate cartel who’ve diluted their own product in order to hoard the profits.
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