In his Paddington movies, Paul King folded animation and live action together into delightful all-ages adventures, selling a message of community and acceptance with spry wit and disarming sweetness, not to mention Ben Whishaw’s impeccable voice work, imbuing the gentle ursine protagonist with genuine heart. Depending on your appetite for sugary excess, you might embrace the director’s Wonka as more of the same. Or you might find the qualities that distinguished his previous hits get steamrolled here by strained whimsy and an aggressive charm that wears you down rather than lifts you up.

Mercifully, we’re a long way from the garish nightmare of Tim Burton’s 2005 film of the Roald Dahl novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Timothée Chalamet as the young Willy Wonka is nothing like Johnny Depp’s creepy take on the role. But Chalamet has two settings here – he’s either beaming with almost manic exuberance, as if willing us all to have fun, or pining away for the late mother (Sally Hawkins) who promised to be by his side when he realized his dreams. Transitions between those dual modes are often marked by jaunty song-and-dance interludes.

Late in the film, Chalamet’s young Wonka croons the lovely song “Pure Imagination” – popularised by Gene Wilder in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory – while conjuring the magical manufacturing plant out of thin air. But that CG rendering just underscores the movie’s cloying artificiality. It’s an empty chocolate box.

The child in this case is a young man, yearning to purvey the unique chocolate-making skills he learned from his mother but obstructed at every turn by a crooked cartel of well-heeled chocolatiers, Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton), who welcome no competition to their high-priced goods for sale in the swanky Galeries Gourmet. In addition to the threat of Wonka’s extraordinarily delectable chocolates, there’s also the fact that he wants to make them an egalitarian treat, affordable to everyone. Fickelgruber typifies the cartel’s attitude toward that aim by gagging any time he hears the word “poor.” Which might have been funny if the evil trio hadn’t been pushed to such gratingly arch extremes.

King is in his element with caper comedy, so there’s buoyancy in the chaotic plotting as Wonka and his workhouse cronies use an underground network of storm drains to escape the laundry and evade their increasingly murderous pursuers. And production designer Mark Everson and the effects team have come up with a bunch of inventive Rube Goldbergian contraptions that spring from Wonka’s ingenious mind, among them an elaborate trap to catch Grant’s Oompa Loompa in his nocturnal choc thievery. I especially liked Willy’s suitcase, opening up to reveal a fully stocked cabinet of exotic ingredients and cooking paraphernalia.

Lindy Hemming’s eccentric costumes, like the sets, are awash in colour; Chung-hoon Chung’s cinematography is suitably lively; and the playful score by one-time Divine Comedy arranger and keyboardist Joby Talbert is smoothly integrated with the songs. Early social media reactions to the film, including from respected critics, have been mostly enthusiastic. But the very fussy chocolate wrapper left the sweet tooth untantalised for some.