Wonka has tickled the taste buds of critics with several glowing reviews, but some noted the character lacks the darker elements of previous versions.
Timothée Chalamet plays Willy Wonka in the origin story of Roald Dahl’s famous chocolate factory owner.
The Telegraph described it as “the most fun you’ll have in a cinema all year” in a five-star review.
But the Times awarded it just two stars and said the film was “as hollow as a chocolate egg”.
Wonka, which will be released in the UK on Friday and the US a week later, is directed and written by Paul King and co-written by Simon Farnaby – the same team behind the successful Paddington 2.
Chalamet plays the character previously depicted by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp in earlier adaptations of the children’s novel.
Awarding the latest film four stars, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said he “enjoyed this more than either of the two earlier filmed versions”.
“Chalamet is elfin and puckish, unworldly and possessed of a Paddingtonian innocence and charm – and a nice singing voice – without being insufferable,” he wrote.
But, Bradshaw added, the film steers clear of addressing what turned Wonka into the “somewhat ambiguous, even sinister adult figure with a streak of Dahlian cruelty” who punishes greedy children.
“This film doesn’t answer that question and behaves as if it doesn’t exist. Wonka is just really nice. End of story,” he said.
Empire Ian Freer gave the film the same score, describing the titular character as the “most kind-hearted on-screen hero in years”.
“Occasionally, [the film] veers too close to a Harrogate panto for comfort (see Olivia Colman’s Mrs Scrubbit), but Chalamet keeps you invested, treading a nifty line between eccentricity and sincerity, embracing the twinkle of Wilder while avoiding the creepiness of Depp,” he said.
Chalamet ‘miscast’ as Wonka
Several critics, including the Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey, drew tonal similarities between Wonka and the two Paddington films.
“Much like those genteel, ursine escapades, Wonka is old-fashioned, cinematic magic writ large,” she said in her four-star review.
“It whips up wit, warmth, and the beloved memories of classics past: there’s a big dollop of Mary Poppins here, a little Matilda, some Oliver!, and, then, unexpectedly, a pinch of Les Misérables.”
However, she added: “Chalamet may have been slightly miscast here. He reads as more of a Newsie than a Wonka, as an affable and pretty normal guy.”
The Times’ Kevin Maher went further, suggesting Chalamet’s “thin and reedy” singing voice ultimately “lets him down”.
“Casting the dreamy Chalamet as a younger version of Gene Wilder’s excitable, irascible and fundamentally dangerous Willy Wonka was always going to be a stretch,” he said.
“Alas, it was also, as this wearisome musical prequel cruelly demonstrates, a mistake.”
But there was far more enthusiasm for the actor’s performance from NME’s Nick Levine.
“Chalamet proves himself a very decent song and dance man. He has a clear, unobtrusive vocal style and never goes in for Broadway-style showboating, which bodes well for his performance in an upcoming Bob Dylan biopic.
“His Willy Wonka – bold, big-hearted and sometimes a bit befuddled – is fun to spend time with, which helps to smooth over the odd bump in the narrative.”
Chalamet has previously starred in Dune, Little Women, Bones and All, Beautiful Boy and Call Me by Your Name, which earned him an Oscar nomination.
The film’s six original songs have been written by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.
Singling out the “syrupy” opening number as the only exception, the Evening Standard’s Nick Howells said “every other tune is a rollicking banger”.
The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin was similarly enthusiastic, describing the new songs as “witty and wondrous: a set of instant, hear-once, hum-forever classics”.
He said King and Farnaby had “dusted it with enough details drawn from both Dahl’s novel and the 1971 film to make the branding add up… Devout Wonkarians are rewarded with nods and winks: a turn of phrase here, a visual echo there.”
He concluded: “Like any good chocolatier, King has obsessively focused on texture and flavour. And it’s those qualities – tuned to mass-market tastes, yet held in connoisseurish balance – that give his film its irresistible velvety sweetness.”
But other critics echoed the sentiment that too little of Willy Wonka’s original character remained in the latest depiction.
“Willy feels neutered here, stripped of any edge that might have made him interesting,” said the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney.
“His magical ability to make chocolates levitate or to turn a cavernous, dilapidated retail space into a cornucopia of wonders just seem like the kind of standard-issue CG doodling you see in TV commercials.
“Young audiences may well be enchanted, but I’m sad to report I found the whole confection sickly sweet and hopelessly twee.”
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman agreed. “I’d wager that it might have been an even bigger hit had it been a little less sanded off for children, and had it tapped more into the Roald Dahlness of it all,” he wrote.
The film does, however, feature “the occasional darker digressions that are an homage to Dahl’s more jaundiced view of humanity,” noted Screen Daily’s Tim Grierson.
Digital Spy’s Ian Sandwell concluded: “While Wonka definitely has Big Paddington Energy and is full of pure imagination, it’s not quite as magical.
“If you’ve come to Wonka expecting revelations about Willy Wonka’s past, it’s not really what the movie is interested in,” he said. “You get a brief backstory about Wonka’s love of chocolate coming from his late mother (Sally Hawkins), but that’s about it.
“Instead, it’s an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular – King knows that you know how it ends, so he focuses entirely on you having fun instead.”
