Full disclosure… Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryby Roald Dahl, was my favourite book as a child. What kid didn’t love the idea that you could own your own chocolate factory which developed magical sweets and flights of fancy!
At that time, I was very much onboard with the thought of owning a factory filled with chocolate and sweets whizzing about on conveyor belts.
My juvenile mind had most definitely not thought about the logistical nightmare of it all, nor at that point had I learned the hugely important lesson:
Never buy the cheapest roller-shutter door.
That’s a mistake, you only make once.
So it was with great excitement that I greeted the arrival of Wonka, the prequel to the original story.
The original 1971 film
I enjoyed, but didn’t love, the two earlier films based on this story.
The first, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971, already looked dated by the time I saw it.
Gene Wilder made a passable Willy Wonka, but always seemed like an imposter with his light hair.
In the book Wonka had dark hair, and even to my childlike mind this was a ‘ludicrously unnecessary detail change’.
I’m still eagerly awaiting a reply to my ‘Why Oh Why!’ letter, to the Director Mel Stuart.
Perhaps my undecipherable crayon hand-writing is the cause of the delay.
Interestingly the Oompa Loompa’s were played by actors with dwarfism in the 1971 film, with an average height of 4 feet tall, whereas in the book they are described as ‘just above the height of Mr Wonka’s knee’.
I think we can attribute this departure to the total lack of CGI in those days.
Like the moon landings in 1969, this film was made with not much greater technology than that of a Casio calculator, and given that, I think they made a very reasonable stab at it.
Willy Wonka as portrayed by Gene Wilder in 1971 and Johnny Depp in 2005.
Charlie and the Chocolate factory: 2005
This was a very different beast. I couldn’t have been more excited about the pairing of Director Tim Burton1 and Johnny Depp in the title role.
However, I think we can all agree, there was more than a faint whiff of paedo, in Depp’s portrayal of Wonka, so I think we’ll leave it there.
Wonka: the prequel 2023
As usual, I was very excited about the prospect of this film!
The first trailer I saw for it was in the cinema just before Barbie, and yes, that was an overly excitable time generally… and when I saw Hugh Grant playing ‘a knee high Hugh Grant’ I could barely contain myself!!!
Obviously what with one thing and another I didn’t quite get around to seeing it last Christmas at the cinema.
The outcry from the dwarfism community had very much taken the shine off HG’s role. If only they’d read the book and not just seen the 1971 film!
The same amount of CGI would have been required to shrink anyone down to the 20cm/8” (less than half of knee-height) required for this film.
Then there would have been the added expense of acting lessons to emulate Hugh Grant, as once again, he was playing himself to great comic effect!
Wonka: 2023 movie
The Good: the lead actors
Firstly, I think Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Wonka is the best one yet, a very convincing eccentric magician with an obsession for chocolate, totally believable in the role.
Huge praise also to Paterson Joseph’s Arthur Slugworth was just the right side of cartoonish, an excellent quirky baddie.
The sinister Chocolate Cartel: Felix Fickelgruber, Arthur Slugworth and Gerald Prodnose.
The Bad: the plot
The main issue I have with this film… is that it’s really dull and frustrating.
Those are two words that I never thought I’d use to describe a film telling the story of how Willy Wonka set-up his chocolate factory… and yet here we are.
The start of this film is very similar to Paddington, but without the humour.
Wonka arrives into the City via boat, armed with his marmalade cacao beans and a dream to open a chocolate shop in the famous Galéries Gourmet.
One song later and he’s lost all his money (12 sovereigns) proving that perhaps he wasn’t going to take the retail world by storm!
But let’s not lose faith at this early stage, he still has his magic to fall back on.
About 15 minutes later he gets duped by Mrs Scrubitt, an unscrupulous landlady, who claims he now owes her 10,000 sovereigns, due to some small print in the bill.
It’s at this point we realise that Wonka was hiding the fact that he can’t read!
A huge disadvantage for any would be entrepreneur, I think we can all agree.
How was he expecting to read and negotiate terms on his shop lease?
How was he going to apply to be on Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank?
Fortunately he has his magic to fall back on.
So he magically produces some chocolates to try and sell in the Galéries Gourmet… without a permit.
Which is an annoying detail, as he can only sell them in short bursts, after the song and dance is over which draws the crowd.
Couldn’t he magic up a trading licence?
The thing is, I wouldn’t mind all these frustrating details if it weren’t for the fact that the story is humourless.
Whereas in the Paddington movies (also written and directed by Paul King) our hapless and heroic bear gets himself into all sorts of unlikely scrapes, but we don’t mind, we happily tag along for the ride, because it’s wrapped up in some very sharp and funny dialogue.
Hugh Grant is gifted a couple of funny lines in this film, and that’s about it, which is a huge waste of some great comic talent, including half the cast of Peep Show2!
Mr.D and I kept cross-checking with each other throughout the first half, that we weren’t missing something?
Was it really this bad?
How long until Hugh Grant comes on?
We both concluded that it is just… simply… dull.
Not arse-achingly, tediously irritating… just dull.
Which presents me with a problem.
Dull isn’t funny.
So instead I’m going…
Off on a Tangent
In an attempt to discredit young Wonka’s business acumen and his selective magical use, I went off down Research Lane to prove to you:
That the 10,000 sovereigns he owed to Mrs Scrubitt is far less than the money it would have taken to open the chocolate shop.
So if he could just ‘magic that up’ why didn’t he do that to pay her off first!?
The retail space
The shopping arcade where it is set, very much reminded me of a large version of the Burlington Arcade3 in Mayfair, London, but digging deeper I found that it was actually based on the ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II’ in Milan, Italy.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan Italy.
A beautiful shopping arcade which, in a bid to raise more money from it, the Council held a ‘silent bids’ auction to maximise the rental income in 2020.
This resulted in the likes of Dior paying an ongoing rent of €5 million per annum, and Fendi €872,000 per annum… either way, that’s a lot of chocolate!
My workings out
Wonka’s debt to Mrs Scrubitt is 10,000 sovereigns.
The value of these ‘sovereigns’ is unknown to us, but we do know he had 12 silver sovereigns at the start of the movie… which he lost during the course of the opening song… setting the scene for an unlikely business success story!
I have estimated the real cost of these items to get a feel for the value of a sovereign.
Here’s how he ‘lost’ all 12 sovereigns:
1 = he bought a map (Lonely planet Milan map on Amazon = £4.95)
1 = shoe shine (Actual price at the Burlington Arcade 2011 = £3.50-£6)
3 = dropped a pumpkin, had to pay for the damage (Large pumpkin Tesco = £1.90) Wonka did say that three sovereigns for a pumpkin was very pricey, he knows his pumpkins!!!
1 = shoe shine (again)
3 = daydreaming fine in the shopping arcade (no comparison, whistling in the Burlington Arcade only gets you a sharp telling off, rather than a monetary fine)
2 = to woman and baby for a ‘place to sleep’ (This would buy 2 nights at Mrs Scrubitt’s, sans extras)
1 = lost down the storm drain (Legend4 has it, this is the same coin that Charlie picks up years later to buy his bar of chocolate! Nice touch. A Wonka Bar is £2.95, ‘he gives the rest to his mother’ inferring that there would be change.)
Given the above comparisons, I reckon one sovereign is worth about £5.
Which makes his debt to Mrs Scrubitt of 10,000 sovereigns equal to £50,000!
Back to the shop…
Let’s assume an annual rent of £750,000, therefore I estimate his upfront costs to be:
£187,500 = 3 months’ deposit to landlord
£187,500 = 3 months’ rent
£100,000 (shop fit out, although the magical tree looked more expensive, there’s a similar one in the Ivy Asia, where the floor tiles are rumoured to be £500 each!)
Magical tree in the Ivy Asia restaurant. Unlike the one in Wonka, the staff get more than a little irritated if you try and eat it.
£10,000 = Solicitor’s fees
£50,000 = 3 months’ business rates
Totalling a whopping £535,000!!!
It does not take a maths genius to work out if Wonka could afford to acquire and move into that hugely expensive retail space, he could have magicked up the funds to pay back Mrs Scrubitt in an afternoon!
Including two chase sequences to escape from the pesky police for continually not having a bloody trading licence!
Or do you think I’m overthinking it?
K8x
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Join in the comments below:
Did you wish you owned a chocolate factory when you were a kid?
Did you enjoy Wonka the movie?
Do you agree that Season 4: Episode 6 of Peep Show ‘Wedding’ is still the best sitcom episode ever?
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Fun fact: Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ animation film, was the only DVD that Mr.D and I doubled up on, when we moved in together, all those years ago. I know, alarm bells should have rang! Thank Christ for Grand Designs.
Fun fact: whistling is banned in the Burlington Arcade, London. Only two people are allowed to whistle within this space, one is Sir Paul McCartney and the other is Jayden. The latter is an Eastend school boy who got chatting to one of the Beadle guards when on a visit with his grandfather, when he was six. The Beadle wanted to encourage him at school and said they would grant him whistling permission if he attained a good school report. Which he did. 👏
Unfortunately I never read the book, but I would have felt the same as you about Wilder’s hair color if I had. Depp gave me the same feeling as you in the role of Wonka, very creepy character around the kids. Still can’t watch that one more than once. I so appreciate your work on the math! I knew something felt off about all of it. Good point on his mother’s note to an illiterate son! What a thoughtfully researched post. 👏
Apologies if all this talk of chocolate has made you go foraging around in the fridge for that last piece of Easter egg. 🍫
Unfortunately I never read the book, but I would have felt the same as you about Wilder’s hair color if I had. Depp gave me the same feeling as you in the role of Wonka, very creepy character around the kids. Still can’t watch that one more than once. I so appreciate your work on the math! I knew something felt off about all of it. Good point on his mother’s note to an illiterate son! What a thoughtfully researched post. 👏