Don Shanahan
After an excellent run in movie theaters and a few weeks of digital availability since January, the Warner Bros. hit Wonka starring Timothée Chalamet will be arriving on physical media. The 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD disc editions hit store shelves on February 27th. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided an advance copy to Film Obsessive, enabling us to bring you another disc review in our “Off the Shelf” series. We hope you like chocolates of all shapes and sizes, because the sweetness is all over this disc.
THE MOVIE
Made for a manageable budget of $125 million and buoyed by an 82% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes (including our own Film Obsessive review), Wonka has shown excellent return business and legs at the box office to gross over $214 million at the domestic box office and another $400+ million overseas. As a matter of fact, it’s still a regular in the weekly top 10 after eleven weekends.
Directed by Paul King of the radiantly charming Paddington series, Wonka is an offshoot prequel of sorts based on the extraordinary, iconic character at the center of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonka plays as an origin story of sorts to tell the wondrous story of how young chocolate-maker Willy Wonka, armed with nothing but a hatful of dreams, manages to change the world, one delectable bite at a time. Starring Timothée Chalamet singing and dancing in his best box office earner to date and surrounded by a solid ensemble cast that includes Oscar winner Olivia Colman, youngster Calah Lane, the incorrigible Hugh Grant, and a properly silly Keegan-Michael Key, Wonka impresses as an irresistibly vivid and inventive big screen spectacle and a perfect companion piece to 1973’s Gene Wilder classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
THE DISC
Wonka is bolstered by an adequate amount of special features that engage the audience. Five production featurettes in total go beyond the magic it took to make the movie and its treats. Sure, as is commonly the case in recent years with disc, a feature-length commentary with Paul King, other creators, or the cast is absent. That feature would always be a welcome boost. For Wonka, the five presented will have to do. Each of the five programs have a featured creator at their center.
Unwrapping Wonka: Paul King’s Vision has director Paul King sharing his experience adapting the story of Wonka into the tangent that became this movie. It’s a decently deep dive picking his brain. Production designer Nathan Crowley (Christopher Nolan’s go-to collaborator) leads Welcome to Wonka Land. He and his crew discuss the very detailed set creation across the many key sequences and settings. Coming from an equally sumptuous place of creativity, the costume work on Wonka is top-shelf. The Hats Off to Wonka featurette highlights costume designer Lindy Hemming and her inspirations and intentions with the many character looks.
The secondary traits of Wonka that have captured audiences’ attention are its music and those candied props we dream to eat up ourselves. They populate the final two production diary selections. The Whimsical Music of Wonka documented the shared studio time between songwriter Neil Hannon and composer Joby Talbot. Both had kudos to share towards Chalamet and the cast for bringing to life the team’s catchy songs. If you were caught salivating through the movie (and less so this disc review), you’ve been waiting for Wonka’s Chocolatier. Renowned chocolatier and patissier Gabriella Cugno brings you into her kitchen to show how genuine the on-screen delights turned out.
Colored and primed for high-definition, the fantastical production value and visual flair of Wonka leap off the screen in 4K. A movie like this one lends itself to looking great, even on home screens. Still, this is a Warner Bros. disc release, meaning the movie had to hold its own shine and flash behind plain menu styling and unflashy transitions and functions. Luckily, it does just that for its fans.
