Personally, I am a big fan of Timothee Chalamet’s work, so this isn’t going to be particularly easy for me. Like most people, I had some trepidation about this new version of Willy Wonka’s story, but I went in optimistic and open minded.
From the first twinkling note of pure imagination, “Wonka” transports its viewers to the visually magical, wondrous land of imagination, and then Chalamet starts singing. I’m not saying he’s bad. Far from it. The issue has more to do with the weirdly synthetic feeling lyrics which are emblematic of the larger issue: this movie has no soul whatsoever.
“Wonka” and its fresh-faced leading man is undeniably a talented, multifaceted actor with limitless potential. And when Hollywood finds potential, they just love to shove it into a heartless remake of a beloved classic. Naturally, that’s what expected the 2023 rendition of “Wonka” to be, and was it? Yes, but ultimately much stranger and worse than expected.
Despite its four-star reviews and decent Rotten Tomatoes score, I have to say that this movie is perhaps the worst thing I’ve seen this year (yes, we are still in the first month of the year, but I digress). Though the marketing was less than forthcoming with the fact that this film is, in fact, a musical, there were no fewer than 11 songs sung by Chalamet and the supporting cast.
As a musical lover myself, I tend to be pretty forgiving of the genre, but “Wonka” was unequivocally the worst musical I have ever seen. The music is abhorrently unoriginal and impossible to get stuck in your head. With the exception of one little ditty about the specialness of Wonka’s chocolate, I struggled to even tell the songs apart from one another. You certainly won’t be singing most of these songs over and over again. In fact, for most of the music in the movie, once was more than enough. I’m deeply sorry to the musical composers and supervisors behind this film, but I have to be the one to deliver the following bit of unfortunate news: just because it technically rhymes does not make it a good lyric.
The acting is the worst element by far, but I also have to mention the gut-wrenching awfulness of the script itself. I can’t imagine seeing these lines written on paper and thinking, “This will make an amazing movie.” My biggest problem is that it seems like no one in this film agreed with anyone else in this film about exactly how serious to act. In one scene, they’re normal. In the next one, they’re a kooky cast of verified wackos. Then, they’re intermittently normal with variations of off-putting oddness thrown in, and there is no order or cohesion to any of it.
The plot is the kind of zany insanity that I imagine populates the screens of our nation’s Coco Melon fans, and I took nothing away from the story except the knowledge that Chalamet can technically say a bunch of whimsical things all in a row. Good for him, but if this had been my first-time seeing Chalamet, it also would’ve been my last. If I didn’t know he had talent from watching him in other projects with better directors and screenwriters, I would never watch anything featuring him as a lead ever again.
The humor in this movie is suited for no one: not for adults, not for children, not for toddlers, and not for babies. The jokes are too stupid for anyone to enjoy. They make an effort at including some humor specifically for adults, but they leave the kids confused and adults annoyed, so it wasn’t ultimately worth the effort.
It honestly felt like I was watching the result of someone telling a computer, “Hey ChatGPT, write a musical origin story for Willy Wonka starring a popular actor,” and the rest is history.
Gabi Merchen is a fourth-year communication major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
