The film’s most unique invention might be Wonka himself, charmingly played by Chalamet. The actor brings a gentle quality to the character that hasn’t quite been shown before. In 1971 Gene Wilder’s masterful portrait of whimsy was edged with menace, and Johnny Depp’s prickly, tensile approach had him deliver lines like sarcastic japes. Aside from the occasional glint of mischief in his eyes, Chalamet lacks that disquieting tartness so many have associated with Wonka. There is little in Chalamet’s rendition to suggest that he could snap at one gesture of delinquency from a child touring his factory. Chalamet’s Wonka doesn’t terrorize kids; in fact, based on his friendship with Noodle, he seems to adore them.
Some might see this softening as a deliberate, and unwelcome, sanitization of a morally ambiguous character, bleaching him of complication. But Chalamet’s depiction is cheery without feeling toothless. He embodies Dahl’s original conception of the character, one who “kept making quick jerky little movements with his head, cocking it this way and that, and taking everything in with those bright twinkling eyes,” as the source text reads. He offers his own eccentricity and kooky earnestness while also possessing the gravitas to make Wonka’s attempts at greater emotion resonate, such as those aforementioned scenes involving his mother, or those opposite Noodle, who is also aching for parental connection.
Yet King retains some of the bite of earlier Wonka films. Most notable of all might be Hugh Grant, who plays a curmudgeonly carrot-skinned Oompa Loompa. A Lilliputian creature, he has come to seek revenge upon Wonka for pilfering a key chocolate ingredient from the island home of the Oompa Loompas (some might even draw a parallel to chocolate exploitation as it operates in the real world) but he turns into an unexpected ally for Wonka. Grant’s character arrives just as Wonka begins to flirt with the saccharine, and his acidity, recalling the previous films’ notes of cynicism, balances the proceedings.
Grant’s character—who sings a variation of the very song immortalized in the 1971 film—epitomizes what makes Wonka praiseworthy: He both pays tribute to the memetic essence of Dahl’s source text while providing an interpretation that suits King’s otherwise sunny directorial vision. Wonka walks a delicate tightrope successfully, becoming an object that both stirs nostalgia while serving novel pleasures. And although Wonka’s trappings are unabashedly sentimental, its sweetness is spun with such narrative and formal guile that it does not cloy. That may be Wonka’s finest coup: It doesn’t try to condescendingly satisfy an audience yearning for a taste of the past—and, in doing so, it makes a pure-hearted entry to the Wonka canon.
Wonka’s candied exuberance might seem suited to this cultural moment, when audiences may want to be soothed rather than challenged at the movies, when excess and maximalism have become an increasingly dominant mode of consumption, when the grim ills of chocolate labor and production are frequently ignored. King’s film, though, succeeds on its own terms: He’s made a movie for kids, working within his cramped constraints of existing intellectual property to simply create something fun.
“Back when I was your age, I wanted to be a magician,” Chalamet’s Wonka confesses to young Noodle in one scene, opening up a chocolate-making contraption that resembles a makeup chest. This declaration of intent sounds sincere, not sinister. When he asks her to try some chocolate made from condensed thunderclouds and liquid sunlight, it seems like an invitation, not a threat with ulterior motives that previous versions of the candymaker might have had. You believe what he’s trying to sell you, and he does, too.
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