Wonka is a superb musical comedy, pure sugar [critique]

Paul King's tour de force is to have made a musical before anything else, and it's much better than a commercial prequel about the youth of the chocolatier.

A few months after its success in theaters, Wonka arrives on television this Friday evening, encrypted on Canal+. First highly recommend the musical comedy of Paul Kingwhich here rediscovers part of the magic of its Paddington. And who offers to Timothée Chalamet an ambitious leading role. In the meantime his sequel ?

According to tradition, and we know what it's worth, we can divide musicals into two broad categories: those of the West End and those of Broadway. On one side, London and its colorful and wacky blockbusters; on the other New York and its sometimes intellectual elegance. Andrew Lloyd Weber on one side, Stephen Sondheim on the other, in short: The Phantom of the Opera versus West Side Story. It's very caricatured, but it will allow you to situate it immediately. Wonka : undeniably West End, but with unexpected flashes of Broadway.

Allergy sufferers will be warned, Wonka is a musical comedy, a real one, a tough one, full of magic and marshmallows. The purpose of Wonka is more about making a great musical like Les Misérables And Sweeney Todd (the West End and Broadway, you get it) than to bow to the mythology of Roald Dahl. It remains of course imposing, but not overwhelming: which is what interests Paul Kingbesides making a film that straddles the line between West End/Broadway, between chocolate fantasy and romantic symphony, is to bend the film to its image and make it a heist film that praises kindness and mutual aid – like both PaddingtonOf course.

The opening of Wonka makes things clear right away: we follow young Willy (Timothée Chalametimpeccable as a clumsy and naive dreamer), returning from a trip around the world, arrives in an English town in the middle of winter; over the course of the song, he will lose his meager fortune piece by piece and fall under the thumb of two slave-driving launderers (brilliant Olivia Colman and Tom Davis), halfway between the Thénardiers of Wretched and the couple of barber-pastry chefs who murdered Sweeney Todd. From there, the film will progress organically, reproducing the movement set by this opening number.

We will not have to look any further for the pleasure caused by Wonkawhich does not for a single second consider itself an attack on capitalism or an apology for libertarianism, but rather a pure comedy – often hilarious, moreover – worthy British cousin of the brilliant parody series of musical comedies Schmigadoon (and guess what, Keegan-Michael Key is in Wonka). It is not for nothing that the pieces of Wonka were set to music by Neil Hannon: basically, the film is like the elegant, prole pop (or rather, rural but classy) of The Divine Comedy's albums. Wonkait's like singing Broadway in the West End, or vice versa. The English even have an expression – much more elegant than ours “left caviar”– for this kind of attitude, and it is to be a “socialist champagne”. Cheers!

Does Timothée Chalamet voice himself in the French version of Wonka?