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Timothée Chalamet leads a beguiling cast in a backstory that rinses away all sourness from Roald Dahl’s embittered chocolatierOn paper, it is the worst possible idea: a new musical-prequel origin myth for Willy Wonka, the reclusive top-hatted chocolatier from Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who decides in the onset of middle age to offer five Golden Tickets at random for kids to look round his secret confectionery paradise, staffed by a slave labour workforce of Oompa-Loompas. But in the hands of Brit-cinema’s new kings of comedy, writer Simon Farnaby and writer-director Paul King (who have already worked their magic on Paddington), this pre-Wonka is an absolute Christmas treat; it’s spectacular, imaginative, sweet-natured and funny.Timothée Chalamet is charm itself as the young Wonka who comes to prewar Paris as a young man after a quaintly conceived life on the ocean wave, determined to make his fortune with the chocolate recipes invented by his mum (played by Sally Hawkins). He’s a chocolate disruptor, shaking up the stagnant chocolate business with his new chocolatey ideas; he faces cruelty and imprisonment but wins out with the help of new friends. Continue reading...