Spoilers! · Movie Reviews by Spoilers!

Wonka (2023) - Willy Wonka Spoilers! #573

·2 hr 3 min

Spoilers! opens like a room full of people trying to start a countdown and immediately losing the thread. The hosts pick up their broader Willy Wonka run and treat this movie like the part-two conversation they never quite finished. They are not in a polite mood. The first stretch is all about how uneven the movie feels before it finds any momentum. One host keeps arguing that the film finally becomes worth watching once the balloon sequence shows up. Others are less sold. The same question keeps coming back: what actually changes when the movie clicks? For them, it is partly speed and partly momentum. Once the balloon material lands, the film stops feeling like a slog and starts moving like something with a pulse. They keep returning to the zoo material too, since that is where the movie lets itself be silly. The chocolate bit with the security guard gets a warm reaction, and so does the sheer stupidity of the guard going along with the bit like nothing is strange about it at all. Keegan-Michael Key’s Chicago-cop angle gets a lot of mileage. The hosts seem amused by how much of the movie depends on a straight-faced performance inside a very goofy machine. Timothée Chalamet mostly gets used as a target for jokes and skepticism. The conversation has that familiar Spoilers! rhythm of one person tossing out a take, another cutting in with a better joke, and then somebody dragging everyone back to the movie. It never pretends to be tidy. It is messy on purpose. They talk over each other, repeat themselves, and keep finding new angles on the same handful of scenes. That is part of why the appreciation lands when it does. By the end, they are still joking, still drifting, and still landing on the moment the movie stops being a chore and starts being fun. The close wanders into an Andor tangent and a bit of technical podcast housekeeping, which fits the show’s habit of ending the way it began: with friends talking until somebody finally says they have to go.

As heard by us

A messy, funny Wonka argument that finds its footing when the movie does.

The episode uses its Wonka conversation to do what the show does best: let the arguments stretch until the movie finally clicks into place. The speakers are split early on, but the praise lands where it should, on the balloon sequence, the zoo material, and the Chicago-cop…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a Wonka debate that starts in the weeds and lands on the balloon scene.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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