I’ve never read the book so the mystery was quite enjoyable to me. I really enjoyed how they tied everything together in the end.

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It was a fun, shallow, action-filled romp – fairytale-style.

Kind of reminded me of Snow White & the Huntsmen; you take an old-time fairytale, modernise the female lead, throw in some action sequences and, voilà!

Don’t expect too much and it’s fine.

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It’s a great movie that was pretty accurate to the source material (from my rather spotty memory of the book which I haven’t read in years).

Can I say that they really managed to make House Harkonnen just so creepy?

But I have to say that, visually, this movie wasn’t as impressive as Part 1. I watched both at IMAX, but couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t necessary for Part 2. If anything, Part 2 seemed to have so many more close-up shots of people’s faces that watching it in IMAX was uncomfortable (I kept having to lean back to see their whole face/expression).
Where were all the spaceships that were so big that they couldn’t fit the frame? They tried to show the worms that way, but it just ended up looking like people were sitting on a rough surface with strong wind blowing at them.

The pacing also saw a big deviation from the previous movie. Part 1 spanned what felt like a few days worth of story (ignoring travel time), whereas Part 2 tried to compress months into a three-hour movie.
If you watched the two movies back-to-back (which I didn’t), I could imagine that you’d be thrown for a bit of a loop at their first time skip (it wasn’t obvious and it took me a little bit to realise that a few days, if not weeks, have passed).
I’m not saying that they should have split this into two movies, but it was just strange to see how Part 1 took its time, but Part 2 was “full steam ahead”.

I’d be interested to see what the next movie would be like.

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I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

I do like musicals, but I’m also a little bit leary when they adapt a musical into a movie.
However, I thought they did a pretty good job at translating the songs from “broadway” to “main stream”. Especially “Someone Gets Hurt”, I think the movie version might even be better – at least it was more impactful.

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I keep forgetting that the Wonka character has always been whimsical and silly, that his chocolate-making had always felt like a fever dream to me (in all iterations of the movie), and that I always hated that about him.

Now don’t get me wrong, Timothée Chalamet does a great job at this character – it’s just that the character rubs me the wrong way. Yes, you can argue that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a children’s story, but I was the kind of child who always coloured a horse brown and never purple, so no, whimsy was not for me.

The movie was fine, the music was good, and so was the choreography. Wonka is not a romantic character (in the sense that this is not a romantic movie), so Timothée Chalamet’s charms could not be utilised to it’s fullest but Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa was fantastic.

But what ultimately gave the movie the extra star over a 3-star rating was the last 5 minutes of the movie.
After watching this movie for the past 1 hour and 50-something minutes, the familiar refrain of “Pure Imagination” plays and it was like, “finally!” (I know, they played a little bit of Pure Imagination in the intro, but you can’t really count that).

This song has always held a special place in my heart, not for any deep or meaningful reason, but just that its slightly sad undertones (as performed by Gene Wilder) grabbed me as a child and never really let go.

The 2023 version of Pure Imagination was not the same as the 1971 version, nor was I expecting that. But what I really liked about it was that this new version accurately reflected where Wonka was in his stage of life.
The 1971 version of Wonka was slightly jaded and lonely; he was at the end of his creative life and he wanted to find a successor to pass his factory to. As such, “Pure Imagination” was slightly haunting in its delivery.
In 2023, Wonka was only just starting his career with everything still ahead of him – this version of “Pure Imagination” (or at least the latter half of it) was fun and upbeat. It was just fantastic to watch and hear.

I completely admit that this review is biased, personal and completely influenced by the last scene in the movie. I don’t apologise for it. ❤️

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Watched on Saturday November 18, 2023.

Via Letterboxd – vishae