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Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005)
Pros
Neat-o ending, nice special FX
Cons
Huge fans of the 1971 version may be put off.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted... He lived happily ever after.
Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971) is one of those movies I must have watched over a hundred times as a kid. Even just writing about it, I can hear the music in my head as Charlie goes to open that last candy bar...
The prospect of a remake didn't exactly send me off the deep end, but there was no doubt I was gonna be there. Perhaps what has surprised me the most now is that the film with "Willy Wonka" in the title is all about Charlie, and the one with "Charlie" in the title is all about Willy Wonka.
Tim Burton, who is responsible for such recent mind-trips as Big Fish and older classics like Edward Scissorhands, lends his ever-childlike vision to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and makes the story his own.
For whatever it's worth, I've seen the old movie a hundred times, but have never read the book. If you're coming to the table with the same cards, I suspect your reaction may be similar when you see what's been done here.
For the most part, the story remains intact -- Wonka opens a successful chocolate factory. When his recipe leaks out to the other guy, he closes the gates and says hasta la vista. Some time later, the factory opens again, and Wonka sends out five golden tickets, hidden inside with the chocolate bars. Every child who finds a golden ticket gets to spend a day touring the factory with Wonka.
Charlie Buckett lives with his parents and his four bed-ridden grandparents. The whole family is barely scraping by, eating cabbage water every night. Of course, it is Charlie's fate that he will find a golden ticket and win a trip inside the factory, where a far greater fate awaits him than what anyone is expecting.
Along the way, we also meet the four other golden-ticket-holding children. Augustus Gloop, whose name alone makes you sound like a sloth just saying it; Violet Beauregard, the uber-competitive chick who has been chewing the same piece of gum for three months; Veruca Salt, spoiled brat extraordinaire; and Mike Teevee, whose name speaks for itself.
What's different is now we get to see some of Willy Wonka's past, namely his candy deprivation at the behest of his father (Christopher Lee) who just so happens to be a dentist. Because of his past, Wonka seems to have a problem letting any word pertaining to family pass his lips.
The first time I saw Johnny Depp's decidedly effeminate look as Willy Wonka, the reluctance meter hit the ceiling. This just seemed a bit too bizarre. Thankfully, several viewings of the trailer assisted that initial shock with settling off. The man has always been a brilliant actor, and what he pulls off here is so satiric and unbelievable that it might very well go right over your head. I'm guessing that's what happened with me. Instead of the unsettling-turned-warm welcome offered by Gene Wilder, we take a 90-second ride on It's A Small World and watch it all go up in flames. Then Depp takes the kids in, even going so far as to say straight out that he doesn't care about meeting them. Needless to say, it's a bit of a difference. But if that's in any way relevant to who we have become today -- indifferent, cold and in need of "ha-ha" fakery to cover up our real emotions -- then God help us.
Thankfully, Freddie Highmore does a wonderful job as Charlie. He has the same smile that Peter Ostrum once had, and his face is highly expressive. Which makes you love him that much more when he gleefully shares his birthday present with the rest of the family. Or like when the last golden ticket has been found, Charlie just smiles up at his parents as if to say "It's okay!" Great job, this kid.
None of the parents struck me as memorable except for Missi Pyle as Mrs. Beauregard, who looked like a 39-year-old cheerleader, with a chiseled hair-do, dressed identically to her daughter and pumping her fist in approval every time Violet did something daring.
In spite of my attempt not to compare the two films, I found myself sorely missing the hilarity of Roy Kinnear's confusion as Mr. Salt ("I caun't take much moro'this!"), Nora Denney's spastic disbelief as Mrs. Teevee, television reporters with antlers, psychiatrists going crazy, Charlie's school scenes with David Battley hamming it up as his teacher ("Well I can't figure out just 2!") or such a small thing as Gene Wilder's playing silly melodies on flutes and organs. Here, the parents barely speak, and our two V girls say "Let's be friends!" Mike Teevee doesn't have a lisp, and yet Wonka is still giving him advice on speaking.
What I missed the most, though? Mr. Slugworth. He was practically the key character in the first film. Every time a child found a golden ticket, this ominous character came and whispered something in the child's ear. Not until Charlie found his ticket did we find out what the old guy was up to. Here, he's nowhere to be found, so in turn, the Everlasting Gobstoppers become irrelevant, one more pitstop along the way. So on top of that, the only reason Charlie gets what he gets at the end is not that he kept a promise in the face of staggering temptation, but simply that he was the last kid left.
While the first 15 minutes or so are fantastic, once kids start finding golden tickets, it takes under ten minutes before four of them have been found. On the other hand, when you look at all the effects on society made by the golden tickets, as brilliantly portrayed in the first film (the psychiatrist, the news guy) there really is little reason to recreate those verbatim here. If Burton wanted to skip over that stuff, I guess it would be safe to assume that he was smart enough to know that it would be next to impossible to one-up the first film in that department anyway, so why waste time on it?
Still, I missed those little things like Charlie secretly working a job so he can surprise his family with a "banquet". The scene in which Charlie finally finds a golden ticket is nowhere near as passionate as the original. It's like it just happens. You see a brief shot of a newspaper saying that the "fifth ticket" that was found turned out to be a fraud, and you've barely had time (I'm thinking like three seconds) to register this information before Charlie opens the candy bar and there it is. Granted, the music in the other film was overly bombastic, but it drove the point home -- this kid was happy beyond his wildest dreams! HUZZAH! Now it's just like a parent coddling a two-year old quietly saying "He found a golden ticket, yay!"
I actually remember being touched at one time by the music and the dancing between Charlie and his Grandpa Joe as they sang "I got a golden ticket!" when Grandpa dances all over the room and almost falls backwards. Now he just gets up and does some tap-dancing thing for a couple seconds.
Inside the factory, things look (and happen) much as they did before. Augustus' demise is nearly identical. Violet's blow-up is screamingly huge, Veruca's greed and comeuppance is a bit more disturbing, and Mike's teleportation is a bit cooler although you'd think with today's FX they could have let us see the millionth of tiny pietheth withing through the air.
What's far different are the songs of the Oompa-Loompas (all played by a single guy, Deep Roy.) I kept wishing for words on the screen, as the music was often so loud and abrasive that it was tough to tell what was being sung. A line like "Augustus Gloop will not be harmed", aside from being poetically putrid, has no need to be sung twice. Except to reassure today's uptight PC crowd that no children are going to be harmed. Which is ironic, seeing as how this is one of those moments I think even they wouldn't care. Veruca's assault via a hundred squirrels was considerably more disturbing, as they held her down and those certain possible outcomes are impossible to ignore. That's when the assurance would have been more welcome.
But then, movies like this are not made to be analyzed to death; clearly if an analytical mind like my own can't train itself to shut off once in a while, that's more my problem than yours. All little stuff aside, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory does ooze a sweet life of its own, and its ending will surely take you by surprise more than once. Before, it was merely Charlie's dreams that came true, and here, we see Wonka's dreams come true as well. Which to me made the whole thing worth it.
The prospect of a remake didn't exactly send me off the deep end, but there was no doubt I was gonna be there. Perhaps what has surprised me the most now is that the film with "Willy Wonka" in the title is all about Charlie, and the one with "Charlie" in the title is all about Willy Wonka.
Tim Burton, who is responsible for such recent mind-trips as Big Fish and older classics like Edward Scissorhands, lends his ever-childlike vision to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and makes the story his own.
For whatever it's worth, I've seen the old movie a hundred times, but have never read the book. If you're coming to the table with the same cards, I suspect your reaction may be similar when you see what's been done here.
For the most part, the story remains intact -- Wonka opens a successful chocolate factory. When his recipe leaks out to the other guy, he closes the gates and says hasta la vista. Some time later, the factory opens again, and Wonka sends out five golden tickets, hidden inside with the chocolate bars. Every child who finds a golden ticket gets to spend a day touring the factory with Wonka.
Charlie Buckett lives with his parents and his four bed-ridden grandparents. The whole family is barely scraping by, eating cabbage water every night. Of course, it is Charlie's fate that he will find a golden ticket and win a trip inside the factory, where a far greater fate awaits him than what anyone is expecting.
Along the way, we also meet the four other golden-ticket-holding children. Augustus Gloop, whose name alone makes you sound like a sloth just saying it; Violet Beauregard, the uber-competitive chick who has been chewing the same piece of gum for three months; Veruca Salt, spoiled brat extraordinaire; and Mike Teevee, whose name speaks for itself.
What's different is now we get to see some of Willy Wonka's past, namely his candy deprivation at the behest of his father (Christopher Lee) who just so happens to be a dentist. Because of his past, Wonka seems to have a problem letting any word pertaining to family pass his lips.
The first time I saw Johnny Depp's decidedly effeminate look as Willy Wonka, the reluctance meter hit the ceiling. This just seemed a bit too bizarre. Thankfully, several viewings of the trailer assisted that initial shock with settling off. The man has always been a brilliant actor, and what he pulls off here is so satiric and unbelievable that it might very well go right over your head. I'm guessing that's what happened with me. Instead of the unsettling-turned-warm welcome offered by Gene Wilder, we take a 90-second ride on It's A Small World and watch it all go up in flames. Then Depp takes the kids in, even going so far as to say straight out that he doesn't care about meeting them. Needless to say, it's a bit of a difference. But if that's in any way relevant to who we have become today -- indifferent, cold and in need of "ha-ha" fakery to cover up our real emotions -- then God help us.
Thankfully, Freddie Highmore does a wonderful job as Charlie. He has the same smile that Peter Ostrum once had, and his face is highly expressive. Which makes you love him that much more when he gleefully shares his birthday present with the rest of the family. Or like when the last golden ticket has been found, Charlie just smiles up at his parents as if to say "It's okay!" Great job, this kid.
None of the parents struck me as memorable except for Missi Pyle as Mrs. Beauregard, who looked like a 39-year-old cheerleader, with a chiseled hair-do, dressed identically to her daughter and pumping her fist in approval every time Violet did something daring.
In spite of my attempt not to compare the two films, I found myself sorely missing the hilarity of Roy Kinnear's confusion as Mr. Salt ("I caun't take much moro'this!"), Nora Denney's spastic disbelief as Mrs. Teevee, television reporters with antlers, psychiatrists going crazy, Charlie's school scenes with David Battley hamming it up as his teacher ("Well I can't figure out just 2!") or such a small thing as Gene Wilder's playing silly melodies on flutes and organs. Here, the parents barely speak, and our two V girls say "Let's be friends!" Mike Teevee doesn't have a lisp, and yet Wonka is still giving him advice on speaking.
What I missed the most, though? Mr. Slugworth. He was practically the key character in the first film. Every time a child found a golden ticket, this ominous character came and whispered something in the child's ear. Not until Charlie found his ticket did we find out what the old guy was up to. Here, he's nowhere to be found, so in turn, the Everlasting Gobstoppers become irrelevant, one more pitstop along the way. So on top of that, the only reason Charlie gets what he gets at the end is not that he kept a promise in the face of staggering temptation, but simply that he was the last kid left.
While the first 15 minutes or so are fantastic, once kids start finding golden tickets, it takes under ten minutes before four of them have been found. On the other hand, when you look at all the effects on society made by the golden tickets, as brilliantly portrayed in the first film (the psychiatrist, the news guy) there really is little reason to recreate those verbatim here. If Burton wanted to skip over that stuff, I guess it would be safe to assume that he was smart enough to know that it would be next to impossible to one-up the first film in that department anyway, so why waste time on it?
Still, I missed those little things like Charlie secretly working a job so he can surprise his family with a "banquet". The scene in which Charlie finally finds a golden ticket is nowhere near as passionate as the original. It's like it just happens. You see a brief shot of a newspaper saying that the "fifth ticket" that was found turned out to be a fraud, and you've barely had time (I'm thinking like three seconds) to register this information before Charlie opens the candy bar and there it is. Granted, the music in the other film was overly bombastic, but it drove the point home -- this kid was happy beyond his wildest dreams! HUZZAH! Now it's just like a parent coddling a two-year old quietly saying "He found a golden ticket, yay!"
I actually remember being touched at one time by the music and the dancing between Charlie and his Grandpa Joe as they sang "I got a golden ticket!" when Grandpa dances all over the room and almost falls backwards. Now he just gets up and does some tap-dancing thing for a couple seconds.
Inside the factory, things look (and happen) much as they did before. Augustus' demise is nearly identical. Violet's blow-up is screamingly huge, Veruca's greed and comeuppance is a bit more disturbing, and Mike's teleportation is a bit cooler although you'd think with today's FX they could have let us see the millionth of tiny pietheth withing through the air.
What's far different are the songs of the Oompa-Loompas (all played by a single guy, Deep Roy.) I kept wishing for words on the screen, as the music was often so loud and abrasive that it was tough to tell what was being sung. A line like "Augustus Gloop will not be harmed", aside from being poetically putrid, has no need to be sung twice. Except to reassure today's uptight PC crowd that no children are going to be harmed. Which is ironic, seeing as how this is one of those moments I think even they wouldn't care. Veruca's assault via a hundred squirrels was considerably more disturbing, as they held her down and those certain possible outcomes are impossible to ignore. That's when the assurance would have been more welcome.
But then, movies like this are not made to be analyzed to death; clearly if an analytical mind like my own can't train itself to shut off once in a while, that's more my problem than yours. All little stuff aside, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory does ooze a sweet life of its own, and its ending will surely take you by surprise more than once. Before, it was merely Charlie's dreams that came true, and here, we see Wonka's dreams come true as well. Which to me made the whole thing worth it.
