Stop me if you've heard this one: clumsy smart girl and kind but aloof guy hook up but due to a misunderstanding hate one another until they don't. Both are ridiculously hot and don't kiss until the script says they are supposed to. Mix in some quirky friends, a romantic locale, and a dog. What you get is one of the most charming romantic comedies I've seen in a while.
Wonka starts off with a song from the first minute and flows from scene to scene with minor problems. A prequel of a kind, a young Willy Wonka wants to start a chocolate shop but is hindered by the machinations of a chocolate cartel that controls the police, the church, and the local economy. Willy uses the power of optimism and childlike magical realism to just hammer his way through obstacles and gain friends, played with charm and vigor by Timothee Chalamet. Everyone in the cast does a damn good job being quirky and somehow real despite the over the top nature of the production. The visuals only suffer from some rushed effects (including the dead stop that is the Oompa Loompa), but overall the movie is delightful with catchy songs and a new story that feels "Wonka." The references to the later stories are organic and well done, but the best is the leitmotif of Pure Imagination that caused me to tear up a little and pour one out for Gene Wilder in my heart and on the kid next to me. Overall a damn good time that's wholesome and needed, if not in the world than by me.
The following will have spoilers and probably me working through some shit:
Not fucking around as a musical
Shit starts right off with a song. No joke, I felt a little worried as he danced around like a foppish jack sparrow for the first few minutes on a ship. But then the song ended and he carried on, talking like a real person and stuff. And I liked him, not just as a handsome actor guy but as a character and person. Everyone does damn well twirling around with their songs. I like musicals in general, and while this one only had a few songs (the "World of Your Own" shop opening song was fun) that I remember, it just washed over me.
Childlike magic realism
For some reason this kept coming to mind. The movie has an internal logic that's childish, magical, yet grounded. Wonka's chocolate, for example. Sure some of it has a bug in it that can make you fly, but another has some thunder and (something else, I forget) to bring hope while Wonka and Noodle talk about their future. Or the zoo scene with milking a giraffe that ends with the balloon dance. Light, beautiful, and a little silly if you think too hard about it.
Chalamet is charming, kind, mad
Wonka here is a proto-version of what we know. That's gonna piss some people off, but I like that we don't know what he doesn't know. It's a surprise when he can't read or fucks up and gets tricked and hit. And that he has hope, a wish to share what his mother gave him. He's human, and I really liked that he could become the hermit with an army of small singing men but right now he's not.
Greedy Beats Needy
I did not expect the class struggle that involved the church. Holy shit, that made me love this movie more. Including the scene with the funeral, Rowan Atkinson picking up the phone, "Hello, pulpit" as if he normally takes calls there. Then the guerilla, underground way our heroes have to organize to reach the people. Getting out their message like street preachers and food trucks until they can establish themselves and be the establishment.
Pure Imagination
Every time this little song played, I teared up a little. At the end when it played, I teared up a little. I love this song and they didn't fuck it up.
Oompa Loompa a little too much
Hugh Grant does great, but the effect and the character in general sucks. The little man seems cut and pasted into shots, his little stupid costumes and outfits not fitting the overall feel of the story. It's like they just mashed him into the story as an afterthought. Just wrote the story out and then were like, "shit, we forgot the oompa loompas." Every time he came on screen, it stopped the story cold. You could cut the character, and it would be fine.
Welcome to this thing I'm gonna do for movies that I don't really have a lot of good things to say because they kinda just exist. This time, we're talking about Eli Roth's Thanksgiving, a horror movie so full of homages and solid kills that they decided that's all they needed.
Summary
When a man dressed as a pilgrim starts killing the survivors of a Black Friday sale a year later, a girl and her friends and some other people have to figure out who the pilgrim is before they also are killed. Will they succeed against the killer pilgrim when the store stays open, the town continues on like nothing is happening, and the adults are like "huh, some folks are dying?"
Characters
Let's call her Jessica - I can't remember her name, and I met a girl named Jessica last night so here we are. The final girl of the piece, she's the daughter of the store owner who opened his doors and created a massacre last Thanksgiving. She's got a love triangle that goes nowhere and a lot of friends who die.
Bunch of dead characters walking - Are they unlikeable? Do they not understand the true meaning of Thanksgiving? Probably gonna die.
Bunch of characters that are there - Do they have lines that seem like they could be the killer? Are they helpful to give Jessica and a dead character walking something to do? There they are, loving the shit out of Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrim - The killer is masquerading as John Carter or Carver or something pilgrim related made up for the movie. Or real, I'm not researching this. They have a fascination with Thanksgiving and hate for those that want to commercialize it. When the reveal happens, they've also got a solid reason for doing what they do. Plus, solid social networking skills on the 'Gram.
Midpoint action
After the standard "oh no, people are dead but I'm the main final girl so I'll walk down this half-lit hallway away from the police" moment where the first "final girl on killer" attack happens, we get the best scene of the movie: the parade. Our pilgrim killer took some notes on the Joker and has an attack at a parade that's wild and surprising. This will be watched on Youtube for a month or so.
Ending
The killer gets revealed by some half-ass Agatha Christie by way of Scooby-Doo mistake. The person they have playing has fun and is fun to watch when they go all crazy, though. Very much Stu and Billy in Scream or Noxzema girl in Urban legend. You don't see that as much as you used to, and I kinda miss it. Then it's the standard "we can't find the body" to set up a sequel.
Favorite quotes - not exact
"There's a murder case at my dad's store. Let's not fuck around."
"Thank you, Chad" - after a reading by some guy with abs at school who girls fawn over
"He's just taking her to Florida" - after a girl's dad picks her up from an attack she survived
"He's out of it after too much white zinfandel the other night." - talking about wine like a heroin OD
"She's been cooking all day" about the person who gets cooked alive like a turkey
Best Kill
Not a kill, actually, but dunking someone in water and slamming them face first into a freezer door to hold them in place is creative. Never seen that before.
Random thoughts
So many homages - They just have shots and plot points cleverly taken or randomly inserted from Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, My Bloody Valentine, Scream, Sleepaway Camp, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so many more.
The accents of every character dip in and out of Massachusetts all the time. Even inside scenes. It's messy and distracting even if they were going for "this is how campy horror did it."
Several of the kills just take too long or move to different locations. Some are supposed to be building tension, but they just get dull because we've seen this kind of tension so many times. Probably works for those who have not seen much slasher content, but if you're watching Thanksgiving then you love horror not just seeing a movie on a lark.
The central mystery kind of loses its way. We're supposed to care about who the killer is, and we know the motive broadly because of the prologue. About halfway, though, we get some Scooby Doo level misdirections about the killer's identity and who was at the store that felt confusing rather than planting red herrings. We know who was at the store, why all the busy work?
A parent, hardcore rich Russian guy, says fuck this and tries to leave with his daughter to Florida. This is amazing, and I would have been delighted to never see her again. Except he takes the time to let her pack and hang out while he's listening to music on noise canceling headphones. I applaud the "let's get the fuck out" mentality, but it felt wasted and would have been refreshing for that character to have just gotten the fuck out by a parent who cared.
Some movies don't have to be on the big screen. There is nothing wrong with direct to video/DVD/streaming, just letting that half-baked product go out there to be the background soundtrack to someone's childhood. Disney put Wish out there on the vague promise of another Frozen or Encanto with fun songs and a nice art style, but they forgot to give anything engaging like a story or characters.
Wish is the story of a magical land ruled by the wizard king Magnifico who takes his subject's wish (or heart's desire, it's not super defined) on their 18th birthday so that everyone will be docile. A young girl named Asha finds out this is actually bad, and with a wishing star and the power of magic set out to stop Magnifico and give back everyone their wishes. Along the way, Disney masturbates their canon trying to tie all their stories together as if it was some kind of goofy (adjective not dog-man) cinematic universe.
The art style of wish is very fairytale in color and texture. The hues are pale watercolors splashed across the screen with only bright spots where the magic fills in. All that is painted on nice textures that resemble bumpy plaster and pillowy toilet paper. It's really very nice to look at when the camera sits still but in motion loses all appeal and becomes generic video game cutscenes. The still images of this movie are amazing.
Another thing I am not qualified to discuss (did I mention I'm not an artist?), is the music. The villain song, an animal song with animals, and this one Stomp! inspired heavy beat revolution song all are fun in the moment, but I'll be honest, that's all I remember about them. There's no show stopper here, the songs designed to be redundant information dumps to fill the runtime. This leads to the feeling that maybe this movie was kinda thrown together, which feels very studio.
Let me get this out of the way before I start shitting on the movie: I believe all those involved did their best. Fawn Veerasunthorn and Chris Buck made good choices as directors with the art and the shots. Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, and everyone else acted their asses off with the material they were given. The problem comes with the script and the story.
This movie, with every half-baked reference and cliche line, reeks of studio craptitude. Someone took what might have been a nice pilot episode to a cute little afternoon animated show or an irreverent pushback of the studio that's a little too Shrek and they made it a DISNEY MOVIE. That's a lot for this story, the whole princess classic story thing, and it doesn't deserve that.
Save this for a rainy afternoon when someone sits on the remote and triggers Disney+ accidentally.
Here's some random thoughts:
The magical star falls for no other reason than the plot needed it to (I wanted it to be her dad, what with all the nose touching).
The backstory for the villain who starts a little sympathetic is mentioned but given no details (what if he thought he caused the previous kingdom's downfall with a wish so that's why he's stealing them?).
The hell is it with nobody saying "evil" (forbidden magic is dumb, make that shit evil)?
Her friend goes evil and it's very compelling and then… not.
The little comic relief goat in all the trailers? Talks to like maybe one other person and mostly to himself. It feels like it was added way after to fill time. Funny, good job Tudyk, but totally useless.
I liked the Grandpa character. Very sweet.
Along with Seth Rogan and a lot of other people in my generation, I realized movies could be bad by watching the 1993 Super Mario Brothers: The Movie. Twenty years later I sat in a theater and watched the movie I wanted back then. The new Super Mario Bros Movie is the best thing we could have hoped for: competent.
Mario and Luigi live in cartoon Brooklyn, New York starting up a plumbing business. That is quickly swept aside when they find themselves in an oddly spacious sewer and sucked down a pipe. Mario goes to the Mushroom Kingdom where he learns a dragon man named Bowser is attacking everything while Luigi gets put in a cage. Mario vows to help Princess Peach defeat Bowser and save his brother. All that happens.
Saying a movie is competent these days is quite the praise. So much intellectual property has been wasted in the last decade *cough DC cough Star Wars cough* that having a breezy 90 minute movie that is entertaining and well made feels delightful. If we cannot get original stories any more, at least we can get entertaining films like Air (more later) or Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves (maybe later).
Sure, all these movies are made to sell products or make us believe that the heroes are the million dollar companies that want us to buy more products, but last night when Luigi got his shit together and helped out his brother, one little girl shouted "Luigi" in pure childlike fandom. That's something I have not heard in a while. A kid, not a grown adult, cried out in joy for her favorite character. It made me smile.
The animation is beautiful, and the cast did a damn good job. Every frame is filled with easter eggs to Nintendo and Mario's history while not one time did I think of the person behind the animation. So much is packed in visually (with a beautiful score by Brian Tyler) and the voices matching the animation that we did not get another jukebox musical animation dump but an actual movie.
To round out, I'm gonna give a big virtual high-five to whoever came up with the nihilistic Lumalee. There is dark, then there is getting the director's daughter to say lines like "more meat for the grinder" dark that brought back a little weirdness to kids movies that I love.
If you have kids or access to recreational drugs, check out Super Mario Bros Movie.