'Wonka' returns with more music, less menace

Before there was Elf on a Shelf, looking down on children to punish the bad and reward the good, there was Willy Wonka. In the novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Wonka brings five children on a tour of his candy factory. Four of them are deemed bad (one is spoiled, one watches too much television, one is fat, one ... chews gum?) and find themselves ejected from the factory in humiliating ways. Only the good boy, Charlie, remains to collect his reward.

Roald Dahl, who wrote both, starring Timothée Chalamet as the iconic candyman, the ominous rumble behind the story is removed in favor of a colorful telling of how Willy Wonka, who came to the big city with nothing as a young man, struck it rich in the sweets business by dreaming his big dreams and defeating his enemies.