Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I just got home after watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was telling my mother how great it was, (“But you wouldn't like it, it's full of puns.”) and she reminded me how excited I would be every day before going to school in grade 2 because my teacher, Mrs. Doyle, was reading the book out loud to us every day. And every day I would sit right at her feet on the big rug at the front of the class as she read, getting visibly tense as Charlie would hopefully unwrap his winning chocolate bar. Every day I would give my mother a report of what happened to Charlie after each chapter.

Most people who write about this movie are comparing it to the 1971 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder as Willy. But I haven't seen that movie in years and it certainly hasn't stuck with me nearly as much as the book has.

I'm glad they didn't shy away from the suspenseful moments where you wonder if the other contest winners have been killed or not as they fall into their respective comeuppances. It's a relief that Tim Burton didn't shy away from scaring the audience just a little. If you're going to make a film based on Roald Dahl's writing, you don't let your audience off easy.

It's really great that Mrs. Doyle would expose us kids to such a subtly subversive author as Dahl. He was one of the first to really pull off the 'kids are smarter than the adults' mechanism that “The Simpsons” and “South Park” have ridden so successfully. The adults in the book all have mixed motives and points of view, and Charlie has no one person he can rely on as a consistent guide. Instead he takes advice, but weighs the consequences and asks hard questions on his own and comes to his own conclusions. Not even his Grandpa Joe or least not Willy Wonka are portrayed as wise characters to be followed unquestioningly.

Depp's Wonka actually really resembles Michael Jackson in appearance and habits to the point where it must have been deliberate, just to add to that creepy edge. (“That's just one of those things they make up to scare us kids, like the bogeyman or Michael Jackson”)

There were a couple of references to the original film that I caught. In the 1971 film when they showed the TV that can transport chocolate the first thing you see in the commercial is the camera's eye, made to look like the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let's just say the reference is rather more elaborate in this one. I loved it.

There's also a reference to a certain unabashedly elaborate rock band that I love dearly. Those Oompa Loompas definitely have good taste in music.

And the puns, oh the puns. When the other contest winners don't get or squirm at Depp's really brazen punning you see that they are humourless and deserve no sympathy.

I think I'll see this one again merely to get another good look at all the visual brilliance they squeezed into the factory, Charlie's house, and the Oompa Loompa musical numbers.
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