Weekend Watch: Wonka, American Fiction, Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget
Chocolate charm, smart satire and fowl fun
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Willy Wonka Begins, a writer struggles, and the chickens return. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite
Paul King made Paddington and Paddington 2, two family-friendly outings that in my mind (and many others) are as close to perfect little joy delivery machines as you can hope to find. But even with his considerable store of goodwill, I had cause to wonder whether he could pull off a convincing prequel to 1971’s Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. After all, did the world truly need the story of how Willy became Wonka?
My anticipation for the film was also coloured by the fact that I was a diehard fan of Roald Dahl’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory growing up (and its sequel, Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator). I read that first book so much it fell apart (dear reader, I was a child, and have long since learned how to treat tomes with more care!) and is still in storage in my mother’s attic, lovingly repaired with tape long since yellowed by age.
Could King make it work? The answer to that is a resounding, heartfelt yes. Wonka is a wonderful, colourful, charming film, constructed with such careful attention and sense of fun that it should win over anyone with even half a working soul. But while young star Timothée Chalamet (smiling more here than in half of his other cinematic output) is the lynchpin, everything and everyone that King and co-writer Simon Farnaby put in place around him help make this one succeed.
From a stacked cast giving it their all –– Olivia Colman! Jim Carter! Paterson Joseph! Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton! Rowan Atkinson! Keegan-Michael Key! –– to the excellent, catchy songs by Neil Hannon and the beautiful blend of sets and practical location that give the film its own feel, this more than justifies its existence.
This is the tale of Willy’s younger days, when he was a fresh-faced chocolatier and magician, bursting with good ideas who just wants to make people happy even as he succeeds in the candy game –– and who faces some severe opposition from the comically nasty chocolate cabal that already exists in the city where he arrives from a journey finding ingredients for his sweets. Will he overcome all the challenges he faces?
Wonka will make you believe that even prequels have their place, that something that appears to be a cross between a panto and a West End musical can actually function and that Paul King has apparently signed some supernatural deal and can do no wrong. Is the new movie on exactly the same level as Paddington 2? Perhaps not, but it’s incredibly close and certainly has the same spirit.
This is a film that I know I’ll be going back to from time to time when I need a pick-me-up.
Wonka is in UK and US cinemas now.
Image Credit: Amazon/MGM
Writer/director Cord Jefferson has spent time working on some very good TV series. Watchmen. The Good Place. Station Eleven. But for someone who has stuck to writing/producing in the past, his debut feature American Fiction is proof that some people are just born talented.
Here, Jefferson is adapting Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, and the film stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, a frustrated novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain. This is a satire of the highest order, with urgent, important and witty things to say about white liberal guilt, stereotypes and assumptions.
American Fiction truly shines in its script and performances. Wright is Oscar-level here, a bundle of frustration, privilege, intellectual disgust and concern for his family. He is by turns funny and furious, pretentious and profound and really makes the character come alive.
In support, the likes of Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody and Issa Rae all do great work here, but the standout besides Wright is Sterling K. Brown who, as Monk’s awkward brother Cliff is a comic delight, a world away from the more serious characters on which he’s built his career.
It’s not hard to see why American Fiction is in the awards race, but if you take that as a sign that it’s too high-minded and impenetrable, then put that as far from your mind and possible and watch it. You won’t regret it.
Image Credit: Netflix
It’s almost hard to believe that it has been 23 years since the original Chicken Run, a film released when I was just in the fledgling early days of my career. But here we are with a long-overdue sequel, but one that benefits from not being rushed out to capitalize on past success.
In the new story, Having pulled off a death-defying escape from Tweedy’s farm, Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) has finally found her dream — a peaceful island sanctuary for the whole flock, far from the dangers of the human world.
When she and Rocky (Zachary Levi) hatch a little girl called Molly, Ginger’s happy ending seems complete. But back on the mainland the whole of chicken-kind faces a new and terrible threat. For Ginger and her team, even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk — this time, they’re breaking in!
You usually know what you’re getting with Aardman –– well-crafted entertainment full of silly gags and emotional beats, and Dawn Of The Nugget certainly has all that in spades. Despite a confounding casting choice (ditching Mel Gibson as the voice of Rocky I can totally see, but while I’m always happy to see –– or hear –– Thandiwe Newton, Julia Sawalha was still happy to come back and an entirely uncontroversial choice as Ginger), this is every bit as fun as the original.
This time around, the targets are the likes of massive, complicated evil lairs from the Bond movies and the tricky plans of the Mission: Impossible franchise, all lovingly given the very British Aardman treatment by director Sam Fell and writers Karey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell and Rachel Tunnard. The voice cast are all fantastic and the story moves at a fair clip.
It might not work at the level of, say, Nick Park’s Wallace & Gromit adventures, but this is certainly well up to Aardman standard.
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget is on Netflix now.