Parents' Guide to Wonka

This sweet, optimistic origin story is a colorful, earnest crowd-pleaser, albeit with a few small missteps. Director Paul King (who also co-wrote the film) brings his Paddington touch to this adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic children's tale. Chalamet isn't an amazing singer, but the songs are short, catchy, and family-friendly. There's a melancholy undercurrent about Wonka's motivations for making the perfect chocolate bar, but Chalamet plays the younger Wonka with a guileless, dreamy air -- not the occasionally weird, creepy vibes of Johnny Depp's or Gene Wilder's previous Wonka performances. Colman is fabulously mean as Mrs. Scrubbit, only to be topped by the three clueless, conniving chocolatiers, played by the excellent Joseph, and the comic pair of Lucas and Baynton.

But of all the supporting characters, it's plucky Noodle who makes the biggest impression. She's a put-upon orphan kid whom viewers will cheer for as she and Wonka go on their chocolate-making adventures (like a memorable excursion to milk a giraffe). Hugh Grant is hilariously cast as the first Oompa Loompa to have dealings with Wonka, stealing every scene he's in. The production design is vibrantly whimsical, particularly in the chocolate shop sequence. All of that said, King and Simon Farnaby's earnest script didn't need the fatphobic jokes about Key's character. They don't land well, and there are enough other chocoholic characters that the ever-expanding chief of police is a lazy gag. It's disappointing, but the rest of the movie demonstrates once again that King knows how to make an imaginative family film for all ages.