By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon contributes half a dozen or so original songs to this musical providing an origin story for Roald Dahl’s chocolate factory owner Willy Wonka.

• Read on for reasons including the moment to melt the hardest of hearts

The screenplay of the Roald Dahl-spinoff is by Simon Farnaby and Paul King, who also directs, and worked together previously on film Paddington 2.

The film opens with the Hannon-penned Hatful Of Dreams which acts as a scenesetter for Wonka’s arrival after 7 years away in an unspecified coastal city which has the feel of Dickensian London but the look of France as he seeks to find a shop to sell his chocolate.

Fans of the Divine Comedy will find that the band’s popularity in both the UK and France is useful here and the sound for which the band is most loved, drawing on classic 60s pop composers unafraid of the jaunty or quirky, is stayed true to here with most of the songs sung by Chalamet.

Lyrically the song also introduces the importance (or not) of money to Wonka and characterises our hero as a man with a social conscience but also rather naive.

The film’s comedy highlight –You’ve Never Had Chocolates Like This (Hoverchocs) – follows quickly as Wonka invites shoppers at the Gallery Gourmet to taste his chocolates enabling them to fly and annoying the chocolatier cartel that tries to stop Wonka opening his shop.

There’s also some very funny rhyming with chocolate including ‘sock-o-let’ and ‘pock-o-let’ which is a running joke throughout the film.

Wonka’s failure sees him doomed to spend his days working in a laundry for Olivia Colman’s (Mosquitoes, National Theatre) dastardly Mrs Scrubitt and song Scrub Scrub introduces us to those similarly trapped including orphan Noodle, a really beautifully judged performance from young Caleh Lane, and an always engaging Jim Carter as fired accountant Abacus Crunch.

During song Sweet Tooth we discover the chocolatiers including Matt Lucas as Gerald Prodnose (Sample lyric: ‘Have you got the hots for chocs?’ and ‘Do you think that candy’s dandy?’) are bribing the chocolate-addicted chief of police played by Keegan-Michael Key

Much of the heart of the film is based around Annie-esque orphan Noodle’s attempt to find her parents and song For A Moment is especially moving (‘For A Moment I kind of forgot to be sad’) but there’s also lots of endearing wordplay in her titular song sung to her by the illiterate Wonka she is teaching to read (‘Noodle, Noodle, Some people don’t and some people do-odle … singing this song will improve your mood-le.’)

The song most likely to win an Oscar nomination is A World Of Your Own and the emotional centrepiece of the film is Wonka’s attempt to discover the secret of his late mother’s chocolate recipes and its reveal would surely melt the hardest of hearts at any season let alone Christmas.

We enjoyed Hugh Grant’s repeated take on the classic Oompah Loompa and also that his character had some agency in the film’s story.

Our audience at the Greenwich Picturehouse gave this film a throughly deserved round of applause at its end. It’s definitely a winner for all the family but fans of the Divine Comedy should also rest assured that it contains some of the band’s finest music.

The Divine Comedy won our Gig Of The Year monstas last year and in 2019. You can vote for Wonka to win film of the year in 2023.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Wonka
• Have you seen Wonka and are you a fan of Timothée Chalamet?
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