Khoi Vinh’s review published on Letterboxd:
Wait, what? This was excellent. Chalamet does not play the same Wonka as Gene Wilder did, or even the same as the one in the books, but it hardly matters because this interpretation is wonderful: sweet, naive and enterprising. In fact, director Paul King’s willingness to create something new, and not to slavishly ape the previous incarnations, is refreshing. Unlike other so-called “lega-sequels,” this one only minimally feels like a rehash. The rest of the movie is devoted to genuinely delightful musical numbers, some reasonably novel visual flourishes, and King’s lively, whirling dervish of a cinematic sensibility. He’s grown significantly since his time with Paddington; he seems less like a “Kirkland-brand Wes Anderson,” as one critic recently put it, and more like a distinctive talent of his own (though still heavily in debt to Anderson, perhaps similarly to the way DePalma was indebted to Hitchcock). Though overlong by perhaps twenty minutes, I still found myself thoroughly entertained.
Oh, and as far as 2023 movies about nameless, anachronistically multicultural and slightly steampunk European cities go, this is far superior to “Poor Things.”
Saw it at Regal Tangram in Flushing with three kids, a wife and a grandmother.
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