'Wonka' Is a Musical In Desperate Need of Good Music

Warner Bros.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm of the opinion that a movie musical is only as good as its music. Chicago would not have won Best Picture without "Cell Block Tango" and "Hot Honey Rag." Jennifer Hudson wouldn't own an Oscar for Dreamgirls without "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." West Side Story wouldn't have been adapted into two separate blockbusters without "America" and "Tonight." And while these movie musicals had a leg up being adapted from hit Broadway shows, films like A Star Is Born, The Lion King, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain built their legacies based on original, undeniably catchy, emotionally driven and expertly performed musical numbers. The Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka, however, is the latest in a series of musicals weighed down with nondescript, leaden tunes seemingly designed to be forgettable.

Wonka, which stars Timothée Chalamet as the legendary chocolatier originally concocted for Roald Dahl's 1964 novel, is a prequel of sorts to the 1971 film starring Gene Wilder. While Warner Bros. created the 2005 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version, they acquired the rights to the 1971 version in 2016 with the intention of making a musical prequel that used songs like "Pure Imagination" and "Oompa Loompa." Unfortunately, Wonka, perhaps resting on those iconic tunes, does not treat its audience to a single other auditory sweet. This follows a concerning trend helmed by Disney dirges like Mary Poppins Returns and Disenchanted, where music seems to be an afterthought to IP/branding potentials. Even Disney's live-action remakes, bolstered by classic tunes, seem to include new songs as if they've been forced to by a court-ordered mandate rather than due to the music's quality.

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In Wonka, songs like "A Hatful of Dreams," "For A Moment" and "You've Never Had Chocolate Like This" evaporate from the mind the moment the final notes fade, a fact reinforced whenever "Pure Imagination" creeps into the score. The original songs are written by Neil Hannon, an Irish songwriter whose biggest credit prior to Wonka was penning the theme song to The IT Crowd. Hannon seems a bit out of his depth here, especially when compared to The Color Purple's musical adaptation and Netflix's Bollywood banger The Archies, both also out this month.

Unfortunately for the lifeless pastel-drenched prequel, the music isn't the only problem. Wonka follows Wonka (duh!) as he arrives at a nondescript chocolate-obsessed town after concluding his globetrotting trek to collect rare ingredients for his candy-making. While Wonka has dreams of opening a chocolate shop, he quickly meets opposition in the form of Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton), a trio of chocolatiers who have a monopoly on the business and conspire to push Wonka out. At the same time, due to his inability to read (something you'd think might have tripped him up in his expeditions), Wonka ends up an indentured servant to Scrubbit (Olivia Colman) and Bleacher (Tom Davis), a nefarious pair running a Devil in the White City-esque hotel/launderette. Wonka and the other imprisoned dry cleaners (one named Noodle) must then band together to sell chocolate in order to a) earn enough money to buy their freedom, b) put the evil chocolate threesome out of business and c) fulfill Wonka's dream of opening a chocolate shop.

But while the plot is simple in the broad strokes (as musical plots usually are), Wonka really goes out of its way to inexplicably complicate matters. So much of the movie is spent focused on candy debts and the chocolate stock market. Wonka and co. obviously owe money to Mrs. Scrubbit (in various amounts and rates), but Wonka also owes chocolate to an Oompa Loompa (Hugh Grant) thanks to an Oompa Loompan custom Wonka is unaware of, the chocolate cartel is based on a stash of chocolate capital under the city, the cartel pays off dirty cops with chocolate and then there's also a church (ran by Rowan Atkinson) that is somehow being paid off with chocolate. The whole thing is unwieldy and the final scheme to expose Slughorn, which for some reason involves a giraffe, doesn't make total sense either.

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Aesthetically the movie looks like it yanked visual effects from Taylor Swift's "ME!" music video, with everything from the Oompa Loompa to the chocolate looking cheap and cartoonish. The whole film also has a Disney-fied levity to it that feels out of place given how dark Roald Dahl adaptations usually are. While something more akin got Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events would have been meshed well with the 1971 version, Wonka tonally is on an island. But at the same time, Wonka is also never really funny either. There are a few chuckle-inducing moments stretched across the two hours, but for a movie boasting comedic talent like Atkinson, Keegan-Michael Key and Natasha Rothwell, it's profoundly dull.

The casting, therefore, is head-scratching as well. Why cast comedians and not let them be funny? Why cast a musical without much singing talent? Chalamet, for all his charm, sort of talk sing's his way through the meager numbers in a way that reminded me of Will Ferrell and Ryan Gosling in last year's Spirited. Grant seems annoyed to be there, Atkinson is given nothing to do but flinch at a CGI giraffe and Sally Hawkins is wasted in flashbacks as Wonka's mom. The sole bright spot is Colman, who is playing an amalgamation of Madame Thenardier, Miss Hannigan and the Trunchbull. She and her dirty teeth are having a blast, even if the character is something we've seen umpteen times before.

All in all, Wonka is an exercise in IP that offers next to nothing in the way of music, acting, writing or even aesthetics. You know things are bleak when the film is getting outshined in every category by The Polar Express. While Wonka had the potential to be a sugary confection, the film is as disappointing as receiving dental floss on Halloween.

Grade: D

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