Cinema Saturday: Wonka!

Welcome to the first edition of Cinema Saturday.  It will serve as a companion piece to my weekly Cinema Sunday post. The Saturday edition will focus on newer films and not the classic films from the first half of the 20th century with their silly movie musicals and what not.

Cinema Saturday is all about what's modern! 

And today post is about a....

Movie musical? 

Really?

OK, you might be forgiven if you didn't know that Wonka was a full on movie musical.

Wonka is what is referred to as a stealth musical meaning the marketing of the film does NOT indicate the movie is a musical thus not attracting people who do like musicals and pissing off people who do not. 

Wonka tells the story of young Willy Wonka, magician, inventor, and chocolatier. He arrives in Europe after travelling all over the world to fulfull his dream of opening his own chocolate shop at the Galeries Gourmet. 

No, no, no! The "Chocolate Cartel" of Slugworth, Prudnose and Fickelgruber are determined not to let that happen.  They have the police chief (who they incessantly bribe with chocolate) to arrest Wonka for selling chocolate without a chocolate shop.

Meanwhile, Wonka has been conscripted into servitude to boarding hose matron Mrs. Scrubbit and her henchman Bleacher. Willy Wonka ignored the small print in his room lease contract because he can't read? That seems an odd problem for a person to have while travelling around the world. 

Wonka is forced to work in Scrubbit's laundry with fellow contract captives including a young girl named Noodle. Willy Wonka forms a bond with young Noodle, an orphaned girl with no idea of who her family is or who she is and all she has ever known is the hopeless life under Scrubbit's not so tender mercies.   

In addition to his problems with Slugworth's evil machinations and his forced labor for Mrs. Scrubbit, Willy Wonka has to also contend with his chocolate being stolen. Then Willy catches the larcenous scoundrel and it's an Oompa Loompa named Lofty (Hugh Grant's head CGI'd on an ittty bitty little body) who taking Willy's chocolate as redress for cocoa beans that Willy Wonka took from Oompaloompaland.   

So Willy Wonka's got a lot to deal with before he can achieve the greatness of being THE Willy Wonka.   

Suffice to say there's stuff and shenanigans that must be overcome. For example, Willy needs giraffe milk to make his chocolate. Good thing there's a female giraffe in the city zoo named Abigail who by the way gives her consent for Willy to milk her because he speaks giraffe. (But he never learned to read? Really?)  

There are steps forward (Willy Wonka gets his chocolate shop) but Slugworth arranges for an act of sabotage that results in the shop being ransacked and burned.  

The thing about a prequel is you know how certain things will play out. We've seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and we know Willy will end up on top. But if the journey is fun, then who cares if you know where you're going to end up.

And the journey that is Wonka is very fun.  

Timothée Chalamet is charming as a young Willy Wonka, a bit more innocent and trusting that the slightly deranged man we meet in the original film.  Chalamet does incorporate some of Gene Wilder's mannerisms such as the way he walks up and down stairs and getting words in the wrong order. 

I saw what I thought was an unfair criticism of the music, complaining the original songs written for the film were not as catchy or memorable as "Pure Imagination" and "The Oompa Loompa Song". I will grant that as I sit here writing this, I am a little hard pressed to remember the new songs but I did see Wonka only once and I've seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory  a gazillion times so yeah, "Pure Imagination" and "The Oompa Loompa Song" are embedded in my brain. Nonetheless, I found the new songs enjoyable and Timothée Chalamet  is a damn fine singer.  

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department

(This is a long one!)  

• Keegan-Michael Key is the chocolate-addicted chief of police and currently stars in (no I haven't seen it yet but would like to) the musical comedy series Schmigadoon! In 2015, he appeared at the White House Correspondents' Dinner as the Key & Peele character Luther, President Barack Obama's anger translator.
• Paterson Joseph (Arthur Slugworth) was in the Doctor Who episodes "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways" and was once the odds on favorite to be the "next" Doctor on two separate occasions (and of course he didn't get it).  And speaking of Doctor Who...  
• Matt Lucas (Gerald Prodnose) was companion Nardole during Peter Capaldi's last season as the Doctor.
• Mathew Baynton (Felix Fickelgruber) is Thomas Thorne on Ghosts UK.  
• Yep, that's "Mr. Bean" himself, Rowan Atkinson as Father Julius.   
• Olivia Colman is Mrs. Scrubit and has been in Doctor Who, Fleabag, The Crown and Broadchurch and so many other things.  
• Rich Fulcher (Larry Chucklesworth) was in 2 episodes of Garfunkel and Oates and also provides voices on Star Trek Lower Decks.  
• Simon Farnaby stars as zoo security guard Basil and co-wrote the screenplay for Wonka AND is a co-creator of Ghosts UK where he also stars as the trouserless Julian. 
• Charlotte Ritchie (Barbara) is Alison Cooper in Ghosts UK. And she was in the Doctor Who episode "Resolution" (she's the person controlled by the Dalek squid.)   
• Tracy Ifeachor (Noodle's mother) was Abigail Naismith in  the Doctor Who special, "The End of Time".

Wonka may be sweeter and lighter than the regularly cynical and notoriously kvetchy creator Roald Dahl would've care for.  The late writer was famously irked at the tone of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory  but there is more than enough dark themes in Wonka to leaven the sweetness. The stranglehold Slugworth's cartel has not only on the business world but also on the authorities is the sort of cynical turn that the late writer would understand. And Mrs. Scrubbit, all brutal and selfish and lacking in empathy is very much a Roald Dahl type creation. 

Wonka may be an origin story nobody asked for but if you're gonna do it, do it right and with only a few misteps (Willy Wonka can't read?), Wonka gets it right.  

Tomorrow, Cinema Sunday continues and kicks off the new year with a classic film from the 1930's. 

Next week, Cinema Saturday returns with an action comedy film from the early 2000's.