WONKA

WONKA is the pre story to the familiar WILLY WONKA AND THE CHCOCOLATE FACTORY movie. It tells how Willy became Willy Wonka.

Willy and his mother live an impoverished existence on a riverboat. Every day, Willy’s mother saves a little bit of money to make a special chocolate she calls silver bar chocolate. She tells Willy that every good thing in the world started with a dream. Before she dies, she tells Willy that, when he makes his Wonka chocolate store, she will be there. Willy also studied magic as a child.

Hoping to fulfill his mother’s dream, Willy goes to a haute couture shopping gallery to sell his chocolate. However, three large chocolate makers named Slugworth, Prodnose and Fickelgruber are in cahoots. They control all the chocolate in the town, and they tell the police to stop Willy.

Willy arrives with a few shillings, which he quickly loses to the shoeshine boy, the grocer, a policeman’s fine, and several other people who take advantage of him. The policeman takes him to an inn, run by an evil landlady named Mrs. Scrubbit who charges him for every little thing so that after one night he owes 10,000 pounds. Her evil doorman pushes Willy into the laundry chute, and he ends up in the laundry with four other people cheated by Mrs. Scrubbit. One of them is a young girl named Noodle.

Willy has a suitcase with various chemicals to make great chocolate. He convinces Noodle to help him escape.

After Wily gives Noodle his irresistible chocolate, he says his chocolate is being stolen by a little orange man with green hair named Oompa Loompa. Noodle thinks Willy is off his rocker. However, Oompa Loompa shows up and demands Willy repay him and the other members of his tribe for the three cocoa beans he stole.

Eventually, all the people in the laundry join the attempt to escape, and Willy starts to challenge the three wealthy chocolatiers. Willy finds out that Slugworth was keeping two sets of books, but his books are hidden deep below the town cathedral. Slugworth and his cronies try to kill Willy.

So, while Willy is trying to start his chocolate business and providing the town with some of the best chocolate they’ve ever had, the chocolate cartel is trying to stop him, and Oompa Loompa is trying to get repaid. Eventually, Noodle and Willy are almost murdered in a boat by the chocolate cartel, but they survive in the nick of time and now have to find the real set of accounting books hidden deep in the cathedral that will exonerate them and convict the crooks.

WONKA is a very fun, funny movie, one of the most entertaining movies of the year. There are many fun and memorable songs throughout the movie, which makes it a delight to watch. It supports the little entrepreneur starting his own little business in the face of a government-sanctioned cartel. However, caution is advised for older pre-teens because the cartel has paid off the cathedral and its clerics for the chocolate they can’t resist, and they’ve also paid off the police chief with irresistible chocolate.

MOVIEGUIDE® recommends the movie, but whatever age your children are, remind them that the clergy in the movie are not representative of Christians. Upon accepting Jesus, Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit, who gives us the power to resist temptations – even chocolate. Even so, Rowan Atkinson as the dean of the cathedral and the other British comedians are very funny.