By Gary

The retelling of the fantastical chocolatier Wonka brings a feel good time in time for Christmas.

With dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.

With director Paul King at the helm and some solid new songs at the ready, the warmly old-fashioned Wonka puts a suitably sweet spin on the classic character while still leaving some room for the source material’s darker undertones.

Wonka has something for the whole family, deliciously funny and it is really warm and a feel good movie and also it is a very good time for it to come out just before Christmas.

Fans of the character Willy Wonka will not be disappointed.

The film also has a very strong supporting cast which includes Olivia Colman, Matt Lucas, Keegan-Michael Key, Tom Davis, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson and even Hugh Grant playing an Oompa-Loompa.

Hugh Grant does steal the scenes he is in and the scene when Willy Wonka first meets the Oompa-Loompa is incredibly funny and a little moving.

I loved the story, the energy, the laughs, and best of all, a killer performance from Timothée Chalamet, I thought he was fabulous, not quite sure I see him turning into Gene Wilder or Johnny Drop’s character, perhaps the former.

Chalamet rightly deserving the plaudits for his performance here.

I was especially delighted with the city’s atmosphere, it’s a Victorian London-like city.

It’s clear that Paul King knows how to bottle Christmas essence, mixing greyish pedestrian streets and brick buildings with goldish open malls.

Watching this movie takes you back to the time when you were a child, and you walked hand in hand with your parents watching extravagant shopwindows displaying the finest products on Christmas.

And what about the music? It’s perfect, ‘Oompah Loompadoompety do’ won’t get out of your head besides the fancy choreographies, every detail and nuance convey a Christmas ambience.

You can even taste the chocolate, slip with the iced floor covered in snow, smell the chestnuts, notice the smoke from the chimneys.

Finally, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” so please get yourself a hot chocolate, get together with family and enjoy watching Wonka because it will become a Christmas classic.

My Rating: 8/10