I am a Timothee Chalamet fan, and I’m obviously far from the only one. At the tender age of 27, Chalamet has been nominated for 94 awards and won 39, having been lauded for his roles in movies like Call Me By Your Name, Little Women, Beautiful Boy (a personal favourite), and Lady Bird. He was the third-youngest nominee for an Academy Award for Best Actor ever, for his breakout role in Call Me By Your Name. He’s clearly very talented, takes his craft seriously, and delves deep into the characters he plays, often giving performances that bring audiences to tears. But I watched that new Wonka trailer today, and I have to ask, what are we doing here? Really. What is this?
In Wonka, Chalamet plays Willy Wonka, the famously eccentric chocolatier from the 1964 Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonka is a prequel to the 1971 adaptation of the book which starred Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, and focuses on his adventures prior to opening up the factory. I’ve never been sold on this pitch, and have made my opposition to IP cash grabs known on many occasions, but even leaving that aside, Wonka’s trailer does not look great. Willy Wonka is known to be quirky, bizarre, sometimes manipulative, especially since he seems predisposed to goading children into bad behaviour in order to weed out bad eggs. That’s entrapment, if you ask me, but moving on: Chalamet is not giving me Wonka energy. I can’t quite explain it, but he doesn’t disappear into the role the way he has with his previous critically-acclaimed movies, and it is painfully obvious that I’m not actually seeing Willy Wonka, I’m seeing Timothee Chalamet pretending to be Willy Wonka. Everything feels affected, instead of convincing. The quirkiness is painful, because it doesn’t really feel like Chalamet is committing to it.
I don’t think Chalamet has given a bad performance yet, which is why having just a negative gut reaction to this trailer surprised me. He’s one of the best talents of our generation, and I don’t think that’s a stretch. Yes, he’s a conventionally attractive man, like most A-list Hollywood stars, but he has genuine talent and dedication. So why the hell does Wonka look so bad? It’s inexplicable to me, considering that Willy Wonka is an iconic character with multiple interpretations to draw inspiration from. I thought maybe it was the musical aspect that was turning me away, but the recently released scene of Ken singing a ballad in Barbie entranced me, so I don’t think it’s that. It’s more likely the delivery of the lines – Chalamet saying “An oompa-what-now?” and “Scratch that, reverse it!” in full earnestness makes my skin crawl, especially because that characterisation isn’t strong enough to make the actor clearly separate from his role.
I was never keen on the movie to begin with, but it seems, dare I say it, cringe. Not in content, or even in tone, but simply because it doesn’t go far enough, and that’s a real shame. I’m absolutely not against Chalamet taking a less serious, more whimsical role, but it doesn’t seem to have paid off from this trailer. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if it’s the same for the rest of the movie.