Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Review
by Stephen Bourne (ap291 AT FreeNet DOT Carleton DOT CA)July 31st, 2005
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Review by Stephen Bourne, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
http://www.geocities.com/iamstephenbourne/moviequips.html
Synopsis:
The grand posters and announcements were dispatched around the globe overnight. Secretively reclusive yet world famous candy maker Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) had personally added one golden ticket to five randomly picked Wonka Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight chocolate bars deep within the grey walls of his magnificent, fortress-like factory on the edge of young Charlie Bucket's (Freddie Highmore) working class town. This amazing first time lottery's prize would be an unheard of tour inside that wondrously imposing manufacturing plant where nobody had been seen going in or out of its large iron gate since Bucket's kindly old Grandpa Joe (David Kelly; 'The Italian Job' (1969), 'Waking Ned' (1998)) had been laid off from there - along with every other worker, thanks to rising corporate espionage stealing Willy's ingenious recipes - many years ago. Five lucky children from anywhere on Earth could be the winners, simply by discovering a shiny metallic invitation waiting beneath a bar's swirling brown and black wrapper from the millions delivered to countries far and wide. Charlie, a good natured little boy who lives with his parents and his four bed ridden Grandparents in a broken down shack at one end of the street that paves its way directly to Willy Wonka's magical sanctuary of confectionery perfection, couldn't believe it. He'd spent long hours building a scale model of the factory from the white plastic toothpaste caps that his father brought him from work, staring with starry eyes at the real thing through the hole in the roof of his decrepit attic bedroom, dreaming about what lay inside that forbidden brick castle of smoke stacks. However, the luck of him ever finding a ticket seemed hopeless. His family was poor, only able to afford buying Charlie one Wonka bar a year. And, that birthday gift had already been opened, ticketless, lovingly shared with his relatives, and enjoyed in carefully small nibbles. The media frenzy exploded elsewhere, as each golden treasure finder proudly came forward on the Bucket's little television set. Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) in Dusseldorf, Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) in Buckinghamshire, Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) in Atlanta, Mike Teavee (Adam Godley) in Denver. Charlie's heart had sunk even further when the fifth ticket was said to be unwrapped in Russia. But now, having found himself holding the real last ticket through a miraculous stroke of luck, Charlie's bright smile widens its widest as he and his overjoyed Grandpa Joe - along with the four other winners and their parental guests - step through the large iron gate into that towering candy making nirvana's snow swept courtyard at precisely ten o'clock on the sunny morning of Tuesday, February 1st, and enter a world of pure imagination beyond their wildest of sugar saturated dreams...
Review:
Oompa Loompa doompadee doo, why did the classic need a redo? Well, it's not, really. Adapted from eccentric Welsh novelist, playwright and screenwriter Roald Dahl's (1916-1990) famous morality-based 1964 children's fable of the same name, director Tim Burton's remake-by-default of the family friendly cinematic musical acid trip 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory' (1971) - a film Dahl penned but reportedly despised; the source of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's Academy Award nominated soundtrack that spawned renowned showman Sammy Davis Jr.'s (1925-1990) chart topping cover of actor Aubrey Woods' The Candy Man, and the unwitting target of an appropriately weird synch experiment similar to that of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album (1973) / 'The Wizard of Oz' (1939) film, but featuring Canadian super group Rush's 1976 album 2112 (home.i1.net/~bytor/willywonka2112.html) - is clearly a more faithful embellishment of the book throughout. Sure, the glaring theatrical resemblances are there. Shades of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat also drift in. It's extremely tough not to compare the two 'Chocolate Factory' flicks due to them essentially being the same story of poor yet noble young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore; 'Two Brothers' (2004), 'Finding Neverland' (2004)) this time taking his aged Grandpa Joe (Dublin's David Kelly tenderly replaces Oscar winning movie and 'Chico and the Man' (1974-1978) TV star Jack Albertson's (1907-1981) Uncle Joe here) on that winning golden ticket tour of reclusive Willy Wonka's (Johnny Depp; 'Don Juan DeMarco' (1995), 'Finding Neverland' (2004)) exotically quirky candy manufacturing plant maintained by a busy tribe of pygmy-like two foot-tall people called Oompa-Loompas (all played by Deep Roy; 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' (1976), 'Surviving Eden' (2004)), but Burton's keenly bizarre imagination wonderfully sets his 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' apart from pretty well anything seen on the big screen before. The cast here is phenomenal, with Highmore earning high marks for flawlessly giving a paying audience every reason to care about what happens to Charlie from beginning to closing credits. Depp obviously has a blast re-envisioning Gene Wilder's ('The Producers' (1968), 'Another You' (1991)) madness-tinged naivete of Wonka, thankfully replacing much of the corny wit and menacing tone with delightfully fresh quips and playful goofiness. Despite it needlessly over-demoralizing the red haired fat German kid (played by wheezy Philip Wiegratz), John August's ('Titan A.E.' (2000), 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle' (2003)) otherwise inspired screenplay cleverly arms this hundred and fifteen-minute movie's main co-stars with slightly meatier bit parts to work with, with natural talent Annasophia Robb ('Because of Winn-Dixie' (2005)) easily stealing the show as narcissistic gum chewing blueberry-to-be Violet Beauregarde. The cameo scenes with Christopher Lee ('The Mummy' (1959), 'Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith' (2005)) are an absolute treat. The nods to '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) and 'The Fly' (1958) are memorably wry, and it's great fun bopping along to former Oingo Boingo (1975-1995) front man turned acclaimed film scorer Danny Elfman's return to his irreverently eclectic roots revamping Dahl's uproariously strange Oompa Loompa song and dance numbers. Roy effortlessly makes you forget about those green and blue people from the first Hollywood effort. The golden egg-laying geese, Veruca Salt's - the girl, not the grrl band - bombastic I Want it All song, the airborne inducing Fizzy Drink, Wonka's deliriously bad poetry, and the Gobstopper dilemma known from the '71 picture aren't revisited either. Frankly, a lot of the familiar preachy aspects from Dahl's novel and the thirty-four year-old box office flop subsequently saved by television reruns and video sales are either heavily down played or lost here too - as I'd said, it's tough not to compare - but the resounding pay off is that most kids and kids at heart are likely far more consistently entertained at a much higher level by this one's infectious superior humour and oftentimes dazzling atmosphere. Oompa Loompa doompadah dee, this version's awesome, go and you'll see.
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