Wonka (4 Stars)

Yet another film about Willy Wonka? I can vaguely remember seeing Gene Wilder in the 1971 film, but I never bothered watching the 2005 film with Johnny Depp. I wouldn't have gone to the film today if my grandson Oliver hadn't insisted on seeing it.

In the new film Timothee Chamolet plays Willy Wonka, a young man who dreams of opening a chocolate shop. He can perform acts of magic to help himself reach his goals, but the magic either works or doesn't work, depending on the plot necessities. When he arrives in the unnamed small town he doesn't have any money, so he intends to sleep on a bench. He's approached by the co-owner of a laundromat who offers him a room for only one sovereign that he can pay later. At the laundromat he signs a contract, even though he can't read. The terms of the contract effectively enslave him for 10,000 days, more than 27 years.

With the help of a fellow slave, a girl called Noodle, he manages to get in and out of the building during the day, preparing to open his chocolate shop. But there's a cartel which has a monopoly on chocolate sales in the town, and they're prepared to kill him to prevent the competition.

Today was my first opportunity to try out my cinema's new D-Box seats, which were introduced two months ago. They're a cheaper version of the 4DX seats that I used when I saw "Avengers Endgame" in Birmingham. They're comfortable recliners with vibrations and slight swaying motions. There's no wind, water or scent. As a budget version of the 4DX chairs they're not particularly enjoyable. The vibrations were annoying on every setting from light to extreme.

The chairs have also been installed poorly. They've been put in two rows at the back of the cinema, rows 20 and 21. The screen looks small in the distance. It would have been better to place them in the middle of the cinema, maybe as the tenth row. The main advantage of putting them at the back is that it'll be easier to remove them if they prove to be unpopular.

According to my cinema's website, there's a seven Euro surcharge for the D-Box seats. On the surface that seems to be true. The standard price today was 10.50 Euros, and the price for D-Box seats was 17.50 Euros. But there are hidden charges that can be found in the small print. There are no rebates allowed on the price of D-Box seats. As the owner of a Cineplus card I receive a one Euro rebate on seats, so I would have paid 9.50 Euros for a normal seat, but I had to pay 17.50 Euros for a D-Box seat; an eight Euro surcharge. For children it's even worse. For children under 11 the normal seats cost 6.90 Euros, but there's no children's price for the D-Box seats; they still cost 17.50 Euros. That's a whopping 10.60 Euro surcharge, 153% extra for something that nobody wants.

The D-Box seats are a failure. Poor quality, overpriced and badly placed. The seats were hardly used today, only one person apart from Oliver and myself. We shan't use them again. In the post-Corona days of smaller cinema audiences it was a foolish investment that won't recoup its costs.