Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

[mmcirvin]

My first reaction when hearing about this project, like that of many people, was "why do another movie of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? What was wrong with the other one?" I actually paid to see this one, so I guess that's one answer. Tim Burton labors mightily to find some others, and he's partly successful.

There are two threads in this movie. One is an extremely faithful adaptation of Roald Dahl's book, much more faithful in the incidental details than the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The other (replacing the 1971 movie's added subplot about Slugworth and Charlie) is an attempt to humanize Willy Wonka and give him background and motivations. He's a cadaverous loon who lives in a magical chocolate factory with Oompa-Loompas because of his sad childhood. Johnny Depp gives it his all, as usual, and the end of the movie sells it pretty well, but I'm still not sure it was a good idea; Gene Wilder was actually closer to the heart of Dahl's Wonka, a devilish, deadpan character who always knows exactly what he's doing. This part of Burton's movie provides an excuse to put Christopher Lee in, anyway, and that can't be bad.

I heartily approved of other changes. This movie can finally do justice to the horrible Veruca Salt's comeuppance. The scene is really scary, making up for the considerably toned-down boat-tunnel sequence (no Un Chien Andalou references here, though they reference a lot of other things elsewhere). And instead of those somewhat insipid Newley and Bricusse songs, this one has Roald Dahl's own lyrics set to well-done pop parodies by Danny Elfman. And you can never have too much Deep Roy.

Like the 1971 movie, this one does bring out the meanness in Dahl's silly morality story, which, while it's helped by vastly entertaining execution, is really a spiritual descendant of those awful 19th century didactic tales Mark Twain used to parody, about unbelievably saintly kids getting rewarded and naughty ones punished in defiance of all laws of logic. I've always thought it's a little too hard on Augustus Gloop in particular; though the Burton movie does portray him as ungenerous at one moment, mostly he's just an aesthete who is slightly too enthusiastic. I suppose that, compared to the others, he doesn't come out too badly in the end.

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[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Speaking of unsubtlety, this movie has an extended, sledgehammer-overt 2001: A Space Odyssey joke in the Wonkavision scene. It's a joke I've never shied from pulling myself, recently even, but they drag it out a little too long. The Mel Stuart movie was already making surrealistic fun of the Kubrick-derived antiseptic science fiction style in its version of the scene (while at the same time more or less literally visualizing what Dahl wrote). Burton's version just nudges the older members of the audience in the ribs repeatedly (it was probably also intended as a jokey reference to his own Planet of the Apes remake; he puts Easter-eggy references to his previous films in a couple of other places too).

There's also a moment near the beginning that should elicit cries of "Simpsons did it!" (Immediately following "Shrek did it"...)