Starring Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Olivia Coleman, Hugh Grant, Matt Lucas, Patterson Joseph, Rowan Atkinson, Matthew Baynton, Jim Cater, Sally Hawkins.

Directed by Paul King

Warner Bros, In Cinemas.

A young, penniless Willy Wonka dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, but discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.

I nearly didn’t bother with Wonka. I’m all Dahled out, and, unlike the rest of the world, I was never that keen on his oeuvre when the ‘nasty old racist’ (as British humourist Victoria Coren Mitchell is wont to call him) was still alive. Aside from his recidivist anti-Semitism, I’m old enough to remember the Oompa Loompas before they were orange. So, the prospect of a Willy Wonka origin story, even with the pedigree of the ‘the team behind Paddington’ behind it, did not fill me with enthusiasm. It smacked of a cynical attempt to squeeze the franchise dry – and did I care how Willy got into the chocolate manufacturing business anyway? I can’t say it’s a question that’s been keeping me awake at night.

But thankfully, it was a rainy December afternoon with not much else to see (because Wonka was hogging pretty much every screen) and so I was pleasantly surprised to discover it’s actually a lot of fun. It turns out that Chalamet, who I last encountered enjoying a completely different kind of dietary fetish in the cannibalistic horror Bones and All, is a competent and charming song and dance man, and plays the chocolatier with the joyful, optimistic innocence missing from Johnny Depp’s creepy rendition in the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The production design is full of sumptuous detail and lovingly crafted throughout. The songs from Neil Hannon (perhaps better known for his work with The Divine Comedy) are well written, with earworm tunes and surprisingly good lyrics. With a supporting cast including Olivia Coleman, Jim Carter, Matt Lucas, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson (playing yet another iffy clergyman), and many others, we can be content that most of the British cinema repertory company were employed by the film, happily turning out their eccentric, stagey British repertory company performances.

All in all, a very likeable two hours of family fun, except – I barely dare mention it – I did have an issue with the story’s plausibility. Yes… yes! I know! It’s about a man (dressed in Cadbury purple) who makes magical chocolates. Surely if the chocolates are magical, it doesn’t have to be plausible, does it?

Well, sorry, but it does. All stories have rules, and no matter how fantastical the world depicted is, those rules need to be consistent by the tale’s own logic, and they need to be adhered to. In Wonka we are supposed to believe the eponymous hero is an accomplished magician. He’s not an illusionist – this is actual magic we’re talking about. We’re also supposed to believe that he is down on his luck and penniless, ultimately to be taken into domestic slavery by Olivia Coleman (and other working-class characters with bad teeth). But… but… if he’s a magician…? If he can do real magic…? Really amazing, jaw dropping magic…?

You see where I’m going with this? It just doesn’t make sense. If you can make things appear from nothing, you’re never going to have a problem with cash.

By the way, this isn’t the grizzled, anal old scribe of forty years’ experience talking – this is my seven year old self who, even as a small child, had little time for writers who indulged in narrative cheats as if hoping that their young audience would neither notice nor care when their stories didn’t hang together. I bloody did!

I couldn’t get on with Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa either. Aside from the distracting nature of the composite CGI used to create this strange little mutant with a big orange head (let’s not get into the politics of that), if Wonka is supposed to be an origin story I didn’t really understand how he was going to end up consigning his community into being bonded labour for Willy, who, if his magic was as great as the movie implied, surely didn’t need labour at all.

Verdict: But if you are a normal person, and don’t care about any of these logical inconsistencies, Wonka is very entertaining, and while some of the younger kids in the cinema were struggling to stay engaged, from about six or seven up, the children around me were having a pretty good time. Indeed, the little girl in the seat behind exclaimed to her mother at the end in an awe-filled whisper: ‘That was AMAZING!!!’ So, what do I know? 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com