On December 15th, one of the biggest movies of 2023 was released.
The “Wonka” movie brought in over 500 million dollars and has been watched and loved by many. This movie stars Timothee Chalamet as Willy Wonka and has a twist
from past movies about this character. It follows his origin story, instead of his story with Charlie and his chocolate factory. Despite people’s love for the movie, is it really as good as it is talked up to be?
Personally, I believe that the movie lives up to the hype. Especially since I usually don’t enjoy musicals as much, it really does do a good job as a musical movie. The songs in the movie are catchy, well made and sung. This proves itself because of the many songs from the movie that were trending largely on apps like TikTok. The best song in the movie had to be “For a moment.” This song was very catchy and the scene in the movie it plays in is an iconic one.
The casting in Wonka is also very well done. I think Timothee played the role surprisingly great. Considering his other work has been things like “Call Me By Your Name” or “Little Women”, I was surprised to see him show this side of himself. Although, later on I found out he did in fact do theater in his school years, so it makes a lot more sense. Speaking of the cast, it was also very funny to see Hugh Grant as a small, tiny, orange Oompa Loompa. And it was also fun seeing Rowan Atkinson, the man who plays Mr. Bean, as the priest.
As for the storyline, I was actually pleasantly shocked that it was about Willys origin story. I had watched the original Willy Wonka movies many times as a kid, and the thought of how he grew up had run through my mind a good few times. We find out some things we had no idea of before. For example, I would have never known how his mom died and inspired him to make his chocolate. Another example would be how he got trapped in a labor house after falling for an unfair contract because he never learned to read. Things such as those make the Willy Wonka character even more interesting than before.
The movie “Wonka” is loved by people all over the world. This shows because it came out over a month ago and is still in theaters to this day, which is rare for a movie, whether it’s because of people’s love for Timothee Chalamet, their love for the story of the nostalgic Willy Wonka character, or they just enjoy the movie. Despite all this, I believe that the movie is one of the most intriguing in a good while, especially because of the lack of good movies that came out in the year of 2023. To conclude, the movie lives up its hype and I hope many more movies similar to it come out in the near future.
