Rowan Atkinson is a more welcome presence, even if he’s doing his familiar shtick as a similarly corrupt priest. I swear, I physically recoiled every time the supercilious cartel reappeared.Īlso gorging on the scenery is Keegan-Michael Key as the Chief of Police, on the take from the cartel and accepting payment in chocolate, which causes his girth to keep expanding in a tiresome running fat joke. Young newcomer Lane gives arguably the movie’s most appealing performance, in part because she’s virtually the only one who doesn’t spend the entire time strenuously mugging. That was supposedly an act of kindness, but in reality, Noodle has been forced into a life of indentured servitude. Willy’s key ally, however, is Noodle (Calah Lane), a smart, resourceful girl dropped down the laundry chute as an infant and “taken in” by Mrs. They include former accountant, Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), telephone operator Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar), plumber Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell) and wannabe comedian Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher). It’s in that workhouse that Wonka meets the fellow downtrodden who will be accomplices in his plan to outsmart the cartel and open his own emporium in the Galeries Gourmet. Scrubit runs a scam duping insolvent guests into years of unpaid labor in her laundry business. In tandem with her grubby henchman, Bleacher (Tom Davis), Mrs. Scrubit ( Olivia Colman), with a mouthful of yellowed teeth right out of The Simpsons’ “Big Book of British Smiles.” Be prepared to see leering closeups of those misshapen chompers too many times to count. Grotesque villains were a Dahl staple, but because three ruthless capitalists who’ll stop at nothing to protect their monopoly from a talented upstart apparently weren’t enough, the script throws in a coarse innkeeper, Mrs. Fickelgruber typifies the cartel’s attitude toward that aim by gagging any time he hears the word “poor.” Which might have been funny if the evil trio hadn’t been pushed to such gratingly arch extremes. In addition to the threat of Wonka’s extraordinarily delectable chocolates, there’s also the fact that he wants to make them an egalitarian treat, affordable to everyone. The child in this case is a young man, yearning to purvey the unique chocolate-making skills he learned from his mother but obstructed at every turn by a crooked cartel of well-heeled chocolatiers, Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton), who welcome no competition to their high-priced goods for sale in the swanky Galeries Gourmet. The vibe of the movie sits in the general Mary Poppins area, but the light touch that made King’s previous two features so pleasurable is in short supply.įarnaby and King’s screenplay strays outside Dahl’s original story to imagine what came before, while remaining more or less true to the author’s thematic playground of pure-hearted children triumphing over wicked adults. But for this reviewer, the pretty, candy-colored Old World Europe created here, while impressive in terms of design detail, has all the appeal of those unwatchable Fantastic Beasts films. People who saw the Wilder version as kids are fanatical in their love for it, and maybe they’ll be happily caught up in this messily plotted prequel, scripted by Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby with King. But that CG rendering just underscores the movie’s cloying artificiality. Late in the film, Chalamet’s young Wonka croons the lovely song “Pure Imagination” - popularized by Gene Wilder in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory - while conjuring the magical manufacturing plant out of thin air. Screenwriters: Simon Farnaby, Paul King, based on characters created by Roald Dahl Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Natasha Rothwell, Rich Fulcher, Rakhee Thakrar, Tom Davis, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |