WONKA****

So cards on the table. Gene Wilder is my Willy Wonka. I love that film. It remains perfection. Silly and fun and sinister and melancholy and everything wonderful and enchanting.* But I am pleased to report that Timothee Chalamet's musical origins story is charming and delightful, and if lacking the sinister melancholia, well he is just a young lad. 

This version of Roald Dahl's iconic character sees him as a young impoverished man, desperate to share his chocolate with the world so that he can feel close to his dead mother. (Okay it's not as creepy as that just sounded). But he is up against two interlocking groups of villains. First, Olivia Colman and Tom Davis are Wonka's evil landlords, straight out of Les Miserables, complete with an abandoned cute orphan girl called Noodle (Calah Lane). The second group of villains are the chocolate oligopoly who control the supply by bribing the local police chief (Keegan Michael Key) and cleric (Rowan Atkinson).  And in case you didn't think that was story line enough, we have a delicious cameo from a scene-stealing Hugh Grant as the original Oompa Loompa.

All of this makes for a complicated but never hard-to-follow adventure story set in a kind of fantasy Victorian mittel-europe that is sumptuous and wonderful in its production design. Chalamet is absolutely delightful as Wonka, Calah Lane adds empathy and earnestness as his sidekick Noodle, and all the adults are wonderfully cast. Of course, this is Hugh Grant's film. He is always better as villains and rogues, but his Oompa Loompa really does have some pathos to him too. Kudos to the writer-director behind PADDINGTON (Simon Farnaby and Paul King) for creating yet another warm-hearted but never schmaltzy family adventure. My only quibble is that the songs - from The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon - are not as immediately catchy as those from the original film - something that is highlighted whenever they use one of those iconic vintage tunes. Nonetheless, I await the inevitable West End musical!

WONKA has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. *Let's not even discuss the abomination that was the Johnny Depp version. 

MATILDA - BFI London FIlm Festival 2022 - Opening Night

Tim Minchin's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved MATILDA is a phenomenal musical with a big heart and an incredibly talented cast, but this new film version would've benefited from a proper film director and about 20 minutes taking out of its middle section. The result is a film that is deeply affecting, and contains some stunning set pieces, but that seriously lags in the middle, and feels a bit too garish and visually disjointed to really work for an adult audience.

The story is likely familiar to you.  Matilda (Alisha Weir) is an unwanted little girl, whose prodigious talent is unappreciated by her neglectful, criminal parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough). When the school inspectors compel him, Matilda's father sends her to an horrific school called Crunch 'Em Hall run by the tyrannical Mrs Trunchbull.  Matilda may be little but she's courageous and has a strong moral compass. At first Matilda channels her anger and frustration into a tragic love story that she recites to the travelling librarian Miss Phelps (Sindhu Vee).  But finally, Matilda leads the children and oppressed teacher Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) in a revolution, helped by her long experience of practical jokes against her dad. 

As I said before, the musical numbers crafted by Tim Minchin are just fantastic and the choreography is kinetic. All of the kids in this massive ensemble cast do a wonderful job. The adults are great - I could see Emma Thompson being nominated for supporting actress gongs if only award shows valued comedy as much as they do dramatic roles. But the real surprise in the cast was Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in a role that shows her range beyond the athletic action  of a James Bond film.

The problem is just how BIG this film is visually.  I remember reading an interview with Sam Mendes when he moved from theatre to film with AMERICAN BEAUTY and described having to reshoot the opening scenes because he hadn't realised he needed to modulate for the screen. I feel theatre director Matthew Warchus needed that same lesson. The opening number in a hospital was dayglo bright and so big and loud and cartoonish I was seriously worried. The movie did settle down a bit, but I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if this was directed by someone who had the confidence to come up with a palette that leaned more into Dahl's gothic side, and also the confidence to cut some of the more repetitive numbers. 

There's also a flaw in the book/musical/movie that there isn't actually any character development until the final 30 minutes. Matilda comes to us fully formed as bright and brave; Miss Honey is passive pretty much throughout; Miss Trunchbull and the parents are mean. No-one grows, no-one learns.  We just move in circles.

MATILDA opened the BFI London Film Festival 2022 and opens in UK cinemas on November 25th before being streamed on Netflix on December 9th.

Wes Anderson's THE FANTASTIC MR FOX to open London 2009

After the genius of BOTTLE ROCKET and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and the self-indulgent fiascos of THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and THE DARJEELING LIMITED, all eyes are on Wes Anderson's next project, an animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, THE FANTASTIC MR FOX. Set for release in the UK on October 23rd and in the US on November 13th, the movie will open the London Film Festival this year. Let's hope it can break the hoo-doo of recent open films which have all been picked on commercial rather than critical grounds - mediocre, solid but that's all. I give you films such as THE CONSTANT GARDENER, FROST/NIXON and oh, that awful biopic, SYLVIA. So far, things look good. We have a voice cast stuffed with Anderson regulars - Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston - but we also have top notch British characters - Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory - not to mention genuine Hollywood A-list in Meryl Streep (stepping in for Cate Blanchett as Mrs Fox). I also love that Anderson has gone back to old school stop motion animation. Sounds, if not fantastic, given his recent record, at least intriguing....

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY – bizarre directorial choices undercut the superb production design

I usually love movies by Tim Burton. He has an originality of vision that is rare in Hollywood and I adore the way he mixes mythic fairytales with the darker, nastier aspects of life. These two characteristics of his directorial skill would seem perfectly matched to the novels of Roald Dahl. I am a great fan of Dahl’s work precisely because he does not sugar-coat the nastiness of life as a kid. A brilliant example is in his novel, The Witches. The hero –a small boy – is turned into a mouse by an evil witch. By the end of the novel, the witches have been vanquished, but the boy is still a mouse. He has not been turned back into a kid in a classic Hollywood-ending. Indeed, he seems rather pleased that, as a mouse, his life expectancy is about the same as for his beloved old grandmother. Dark thoughts indeed for a children’s book. But, as I said, brilliantly suited to a director who made a kid’s animated movie called THE CORPSE BRIDE.

Sure enough, Burton brings a lot to this new interpretation of Dahls’ book. The production is lush and looks expensive, in sharp contrast to the 1971 version starring Gene Wilder. The set and costume design in beautifully realised and the cast is terrific. Freddie Highmore, the little kid from Finding Neverland, is charming as earnest little Charlie Bucket – the poor kid who dreams of a finding one of the five Golden Tickets that will win him entry to Willy Wonka’s famous chocolate factory. And the actors and actresses playing Charlie’s parents and grandparents are all great. It was also inspired to cast Deep Roy as all the oompa-loompas, morphing him in a variety of costumes in the various song and dance numbers, which are all fantastic fun. Compared to the original movie, the oompa loompas now seem to have real personality rather than being ciphers for the narrative-enhancing clever poems.

But there are big problems with this adaptation. First off, I think that at just under two hours the movie is a long play, especially if you are taking a young kid to see the movie. Admittedly, this movie is not much longer than the 1971 version, but I feel that the original was much more likely to hold a child’s attention because the entire second act takes place in the factory. In the new version, while kids will probably be entranced by the singing and dancing inside the factory, when the movie takes a tangent into the back story of Willy Wonka, they are likely to get fidgety. Heck, even I got fidgety. I am just not convinced that we need a back story for Willy Wonka: it just seems like an excuse for Tim Burton to re-tread thematic material he has already covered many times – the relationship between fathers and sons – notably in the cinematic mis-fire BIG FISH.

The second problem is that, in a variety of small ways, Tim Burton has made a rather more malicious film than the original adaptation. A case in point is the contrast between the original and new Veruca Salt. In the original movie, Veruca is a spoilt child, but her father is fully aware of this. A number of times, he looks nervously at Willy and shrugs as if to say, “I know it’s my fault, but now she is out of control and I don’t know what to do!” By contrast, in the new version, Mr Salt is as snobbish and obnoxious as his daughter and equally deserves her fate. Burton has made every parent more reckless and less sympathetic. To my mind these caricatures diminish the original material. Surely the novel is, if anything, a salutary warning to normal parents of the risks of over-indulging your kids. You are meant to look at these on-screen parents and say, “Jeez, that could be me!” rather than “What a bunch of freaks!”

I also found Johnny Depp’s interpretation of the Willy Wonka character bizarre and befuddling. The accent fluctuates as does the persona. Is he a geeky over-grown kid or an adult? The costume and make-up is more than eccentric and showman-like – it is just unsettling. Moreover, time and again we get the feeling that Depp’s Wonka really doesn’t like children at all. By contrast, in the book and the original film, Willy Wonka is just a normal guy, albeit a fairly eccentric one who lives alone in a chocolate factory populated by oompa loompas. He likes children, but not spoiled ones, and despairs of finding an heir. I love the fact that with Gene Wilder’s portrayal he is always an “in control” adult. The costume and song are all for show. Fundamentally he is a canny guy. The key to this is that when he comes out to greet the kids, he is hobbling with a walking stick. Then suddenly he turns a somersault and jumps up, fit as a fiddle. From that moment on, we don’t really know whether to trust him. He isn’t just some dappy, doo-lally, big kid. I respected the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka. I wouldn’t leave the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka alone with my kids. And surely, for a kids’ film, that is a pretty fatal flaw.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is on global release.