Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!
Yes, I am of the firm opinion that Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie, but enough about that. In Paul King’s Wonka (2023), there is often snow on the cobblestones of the old town renowned for its chocolate. It could be Paris or Charles Dickens’ London, while the shopping arcades reminded me of Milan, but it matters little where the story is set: it’s an olden-time dream world where it’s possible to manufacture magical chocolate if you are ready to go and milk a giraffe at the local zoo.
What made me fall a little in love with the movie is his sparingly used CGI. There is chocolate so magical that it hovers and whizzes through the air. There will be a chocolate fountain and cotton candy clouds towards the end, and there is an all too colorful Hugh Grant starring as the main Oompa Loompa, a role that Grant hated, but it does not show at all in the movie. And Timothée Chalamet slipped into the role so easily that I forgot what I had already seen him in. His Willy Wonka is so good-natured to everyone, even the scoundrels, that you immediately like him, but without being twee or naïve. That he can’t read and has to be taught by Mrs Scrubitt’s indentured servant Noodle (Olivia Colman and Calah Lane) is a feature that the movie solves by the way and matter-of-factly. There are musical numbers, but they fit the movie and don’t come at you back to back. The characters have their lines and only break into song when it fits.
And I can go on about the cast. Paterson Joseph, who was so threatening in The Leftovers (2014-2017), has a dangerous, chocolate-sweet smile that is slightly too big, so that he needs two business partner sidekicks to utter threats and indignations at the new confectionary wunderkind in town. There are smaller rolls for Jim Carter and Matt Lucas. And of course they have to break into Slugworth’s headquarters, not to prove that he is a baddie, but to save the small group of unfortunates who were so innocent as to sign Mrs Scrubitt’s runious renting contract. And would you really be surprised if the priest is played by Rowan Atkinson? Or Willy’s mother by Sally Hawkins?
There is a happy ending, but the movie kept me entertained that I would not have minded a less splendid ending – something to make me hungry for another feature. Willy Wonka can surround himself with any kind of ensemble cast, he will fit right in and never lose his chocolaty inventiveness or his good mood.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 
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