The OAO Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Thread

[bob_barron 0]

Let me dispense with the obvious comparison immediately: this version is more faithful and substantive than Mel Stuart's foppish 1971 production, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Somehow - probably because many of my generation saw this year-after-year on television during our youths - that overrated motion picture has become a classic. Dahl hated it, and it's no wonder why: the edgy became genial, Willy Wonky was transformed into a father figure, and the Oompa Loompas sang lame songs (okay, so one or two of those tunes are catchy). In making this movie, Burton shoulders aside Stuart's film and returns to the source material. The result is faithful enough to have earned the Dahl family's seal of approval.

 

Johnny Depp's portrayal of Wonka is creepy. This is the kind of man one wouldn't feel safe leaving a child alone with. Every once in a while, he says something unexpected. Consider, for example, his introduction to a chamber in his factory: "Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But that is called cannibalism, and it's frowned upon in most societies." Does Depp's Wonka recall Michael Jackson? Without question, and some of the mannerisms are so similar that it's impossible to believe it's a coincidence. Depp and Burton have said that the portrayal is based on Howard Hughes and Edward Scissorhands, and it's not hard to see those influences, as well. In fact, Burton pays explicit homage to his earlier movie in a scene in which Wonka is shown hefting a pair of large scissors to cut a ribbon.

 

Young Freddie Highmore acquits himself admirably as Charlie, and what he accomplishes here may help to dispel the memory of Peter Ostrum's hideous acting in the same role more than three decades ago. This is Highmore's second consecutive outing opposite Depp - the two appeared in Finding Neverland. The supporting cast is filled out nicely. Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's current off-screen leading lady) and Noah Taylor play Charlie's parents. And veteran Irish character actor David Kelly is Grandpa Joe. Kelly has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, with recent international screen roles in films like Waking Ned Devine and The Matchmaker, but he may be best-known as the infamous Mr. O'Reilly from John Cleese's Fawlty Towers.

 

The mixture of the gothic and the jaunty makes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a sometimes topsy-turvy experience. In terms of how it works, it's not unlike Little Shop of Horrors, the musical comedy about murder, mayhem, and a giant Venus Fly Trap. There's a dark side to that movie's fun, as well. (Both films feature a shot from inside a mouth as a dentist performs a procedure.) By adding a subplot about Willy and his father, Burton gives his lead character and the story an added emotional component. It's hard to say what fans of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory will make of this movie - many of the basic elements are the same, but the "feel" is entirely different. Lovers of Dahl's book, however, will almost certainly appreciate what Burton has wrought.

 

 

Excerpts from the ReelViews review. Apparently Mike Teevee is addicted to video games, when in the book it was Westerns.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

If looking for more reviews, go here. 8 of 9 are fresh.

 

 

 

My first thought afterwards was that the two movies should exchange titles. The first one was about Charlie Bucket. It was his story that the movie focused on. In the new one, which is titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it is the candy maker Willy Wonka whose cathartic journey is at the real center of the story.

From Three Movie Buffs Review

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

Concerning the ReelViews review, perhaps someone might clear up a Python reference?

 

All's well that end's well, I suppose, but there's a moment when it looks like Violet is going to become Tim Burton's answer to Monty Python's infamous Mr. Creosote. (She doesn't, of course, since this is a PG-rated movie.)

 

I've not seen any of the Python movies, I'm afraid.

[Nighthawk 0]

A huge fat guy that says "Fuck off, I'm full." and pukes a lot before exploding.

 

Hey Bob, I wouldn't complain about a children's movie being genial and kind instead of dark and creepy. I mean, you know.

[DMann2003 0]

Bob's just looking for any window to shun the 71 version and escalate the 05 version. He's just looking for opinions to vindicate his own. I merely happen to disagree with him (and Berardinelli in this case, man is he becoming more smug with each review).

 

Yes Peter Ostrum couldn't act to save a cat's life. That's why he became a vetrinarian.

 

The main reason Dahl didn't like the 71 version is all the additional dialogue David Seltzer put in, using quotes from Wilde and Shakespeare for Wonka. Well with all apologies to the Dahl estate, I find myself quoting Wonka's dialogue all the time.

 

I'm not saying that the 71 film can't be topped, in fact it looks like Burton's done a fine job. I just get defensive of my Wilder/Anthony Newley song-and-dance/orange-faced Oompa-Loompas/ adaptation is all.

[Nighthawk 0]

And lest we forget, the 71 version did have it's share of subtext. You can read plenty of drug references into it if you like, and many quotes become positively filthy when taken out of context.

 

Say, Marilyn Manson did most of an album about that and lest we forget was the name of his greatest hits album. I wasn't even aware of that pun when I said it.

[bob_barron 0]

Bob's just looking for any window to shun the 71 version and escalate the 05 version.  He's just looking for opinions to vindicate his own.  I merely happen to disagree with him (and Berardinelli in this case, man is he becoming more smug with each review).

 

Yes Peter Ostrum couldn't act to save a cat's life.  That's why he became a vetrinarian.

 

The main reason Dahl didn't like the 71 version is all the additional dialogue David Seltzer put in, using quotes from Wilde and Shakespeare for Wonka.  Well with all apologies to the Dahl estate, I find myself quoting Wonka's dialogue all the time.

 

I'm not saying that the 71 film can't be topped, in fact it looks like Burton's done a fine job.  I just get defensive of my Wilder/Anthony Newley song-and-dance/orange-faced Oompa-Loompas/ adaptation is all.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

To be fair, I'll freely admit to being really anal about the adaptation of the book, since Dahl is my favourite author and it's one of my favourite books.

 

I like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory just fine, I just remember everytime I watch it, the changes from the book always really bothered me. But as I said, I'm really anal about stuff like that.

 

Hearing that they're making a version that's supposed to be more faithful has excited me.

[Nighthawk 0]

And hearing you say anal so many times has excited me.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

There is another movie clip added here, at yahoo. Found at the bottom, it is Vercua's father explaining how he found the Golden Ticket for her.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I'm glad someone mentioned the original Charlie not looking impoverished enough. Friggin' kid had rosy cheeks, and meat on his bones.

 

I think I saw a picture of the new one. Scrawny and dark with a lot of freckles and a gap in his teeth, right? Because that's what Charlie would look like.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

Picture of Charlie.

 

Its from OutNow.CH so the use of the image tag would've been murder on the board.

[SuperJerk 0]

Ebert gives it ***.

 

'Chocolate' has creepy center

 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

 

BY ROGER EBERT / July 15, 2005

 

Now this is strange. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" succeeds in spite of Johnny Depp's performance, which should have been the high point of the movie. Depp, an actor of considerable gifts, has never been afraid to take a chance, but this time he takes the wrong one. His Willy Wonka is an enigma in an otherwise mostly delightful movie from Tim Burton, where the visual invention is a wonderment.

 

The movie is correctly titled. Unlike "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (1971), which depends on Gene Wilder's twinkling air of mystery, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is mostly about -- Charlie. Young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) is so plucky and likable, and comes from such an eccentric and marvelous household, that the wonders inside the chocolate factory are no more amusing than everyday life at the Bucket residence.

 

The Buckets live in a house that leans crazily in all directions, and seems to have been designed by Dr. Caligari along the lines of his cabinet. The family is very poor. Charlie sleeps in a garret that is open to the weather, and his four grandparents all sleep (and live, apparently) in the same bed, two at one end, two at the other. His mother (Helena Bonham Carter) maintains the serenity of the home, while his father (Noah Taylor) seeks employment. Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) remembers the happy decades when he and everyone else in the neighborhood worked in the chocolate factory.

 

Alas, 15 years before the story begins, Willy Wonka dismissed his employees and locked his factory gates. Yet the world still enjoys Wonka products; how does Willy produce them? One day, astonishingly, Wonka announces a contest: For the five lucky children who find golden tickets in their Wonka Bars, the long-locked factory gates will open, and Willy will personally escort them through the factory. A special surprise is promised for one of them. Of course Charlie wins one of the tickets, not without suspense.

 

This stretch of the film has a charm not unlike "Babe" or the undervalued "Babe: Pig in the City." A metropolis is remade to the requirements of fantasy. Tim Burton is cheerfully inventive in imagining the city and the factory, and the film's production design, by Alex McDowell, is a wonder. David Kelly, as Grandpa Joe, is a lovable geezer who agrees to accompany Charlie to the factory; you may remember him racing off naked on a motorcycle in "Waking Ned Devine" (1998). And young Freddie Hightower, who was so good opposite Depp in "Finding Neverland," is hopeful and brave and always convincing as Charlie.

 

The problem is that this time, he finds Neverland. Johnny Depp may deny that he had Michael Jackson in mind when he created the look and feel of Willy Wonka, but moviegoers trust their eyes, and when they see Willy opening the doors of the factory to welcome the five little winners, they will be relieved that the kids brought along adult guardians. Depp's Wonka -- his dandy's clothes, his unnaturally pale face, his makeup and lipstick, his hat, his manner -- reminds me inescapably of Jackson (and, oddly, in a certain use of the teeth, chin and bobbed hairstyle, of Carol Burnett).

 

The problem is not simply that Willy Wonka looks 'like Michael Jackson; it's that in an creepy way we're not sure of his motives. The story of Willy and his factory has had disturbing undertones ever since it first appeared in Roald Dahl's 1964 book (also named after Charlie, not Willy). Nasty and frightening things happen to the children inside the factory in the book and both movies; perhaps Willy is using the tour to punish the behavior of little brats, while rewarding the good, poor and decent Charlie. (How does it happen that each of the other four winners illustrates a naughty childhood trait? Just Willy's good luck, I guess.)

 

We see the wondrous workings of the factory in the opening titles, a CGI assembly-line sequence that swoops like a roller-coaster. When the five kids and their adult guardians finally get inside, their first sight is a marvel of imagination: A sugary landscape of chocolate rivers, gumdrop trees and (no doubt) rock candy mountains. Behind his locked doors, Willy has created this fantastical playground for -- himself, apparently. As the tour continues, we learn the secret of his work force: He uses Oompa Loompas, earnest and dedicated workers all looking exactly the same and all played, through a digital miracle, by the vaguely ominous Deep Roy. We're reminded of Santa's identical helpers in "The Polar Express."

 

It is essential to the story that the bad children be punished. Their sins are various; Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) is a spoiled brat; Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) is a competitive perfectionist; Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) approaches the world with the skills and tastes he has learned through video games, and Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) likes to make a little pig out of himself.

 

All of these children meet fates appropriate to their misdemeanors. I might be tempted to wonder if smaller children will find the movie too scary, but I know from long experience with the first film that kids for some reason instinctively know this is a cautionary tale, and that even when a character is suctioned up by a chocolate conduit, all is not lost.

 

Charlie and his grandfather join wide-eyed in the tour, and there are subplots, especially involving Violet Beauregarde, before the happy ending. What is especially delightful are the musical numbers involving the Oompa Loompas, who seem to have spent a lot of time studying Hollywood musicals. The kids, their adventures and the song and dance numbers are so entertaining that Depp's strange Willy Wonka is not fatal to the movie, although it's at right angles to it.

 

What was he thinking of? In "Pirates of the Caribbean" Depp was famously channeling Keith Richards, which may have primed us to look for possible inspirations for this performance. But leaving "Pirates" aside, can anyone look at Willy Wonka and not think of Michael Jackson? Consider the reclusive lifestyle, the fetishes of wardrobe and accessories, the elaborate playground built by an adult for the child inside. What's going on here? Bad luck that the movie comes out just as the Jackson trial has finally struggled to a conclusion.

 

But here is the important thing: Depp's miscalculated performance seems to exist almost outside the movie. It's fun despite his character. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has its own life and energy, generated Charlie and Grandpa Joe and their wacky household, by the other kids, by the special effects, and by the Oompa Loompas. While Willy pursues his mysterious concerns, the adventures go on without him.

 

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...EVIEWS/50628001

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

That kid's a twig. Good pick, looks-wise.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

Freddie Hightower

At this point, any credit Ebert had at all fell down the drain.

 

Depp may deny that he had Michael Jackson in mind when he created the look and feel of Willy Wonka, but moviegoers trust their eyes, and when they see Willy opening the doors of the factory to welcome the five little winners, they will be relieved that the kids brought along adult guardians.

Arrogant, pompous, jackass. I love how Ebert thinks he is the voice of every 'moviegoer' out there.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

He got an uncommon name wrong (once) and (rightfully) assumed that Depp would remind people of someone who has been in the news nonstop for years. He's not the only person to do either of those things.

 

And he seemed to like the movie.

[CBright7831 0]

I'm heading out to see it.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Gene Wilder is so much more cooler than Johnny Depp. I'm sorry. No wait, no I'm not. Judging by that alone, the original is my favorite. It was a special movie to me, I grew up with it and loved it. Even if this is more faithful to the book, it's just gonna feel like another creepy surreal Tim Burton movie. Gee, never seen one of those before.

[GreatWhiteNope 0]

Picture of Charlie.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Elven Metrosexual.

 

That's so 3 years ago.

 

Somehow - probably because many of my generation saw this year-after-year on television during our youths - that overrated motion picture has become a classic.

 

Eat shit, Bob.

[Dangerous A 0]

Somehow - probably because many of my generation saw this year-after-year on television during our youths - that overrated motion picture has become a classic

 

I actually agree with this. I never read the book, but did see the movie as a kid and revisited it later on. Still don't see what the big fuss is. It's not a terrible movie or anything, but I'd hardly call it sacred. Then again, I didn't think E.T. was all that either and people think I've fallen off my rocker and call for my blood when I say that movie wasn't great. Just me though.

[devo 0]

Gene Wilder is so much more cooler than Johnny Depp.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Mega agreed. Hell, forget Willy Wonka; just watch Wilder in Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles and then try and tell me that Depp's more fun to watch.

 

Anyway, I love the '74 version despite it straying from the source material (and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of my favorite books ever). I'll probably go see this one this weekend.

[CBright7831 0]

I just saw it.

 

I cannot compare Depp and Wilder's performance as Wonka because both were very different. As for the movie themselves, I'll have to watch the old one to compare.

 

Ah, I'm not very good at reviewing shit so I'll just say it gets a thumbs up from me.

[AndrewTS 0]

Gene Wilder was on Conan recently, plugging his new book, Kiss Me Like a Stranger.

 

I barely recognized him (he's put on some weight), but it was a great interview.

[bob_barron 0]

The movie was not authentic like they claimed, as there were numerous differences between the book and the movie.

 

The kids were "killed off" way too quickly and the subplot about Wonka's father was horrible, and nearly killed the movie for me.

 

It was a good fun movie that I think people will like, but I still don't think the true Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been made.

[bob_barron 0]

At this point, any credit Ebert had at all fell down the drain.

 

So he got a kids name wrong, big deal. It happens.

 

 

Arrogant, pompous, jackass. I love how Ebert thinks he is the voice of every 'moviegoer' out there.

 

Ebert was right though. Depp was totally aping Michael Jackson here and Wonka was creepy as hell. He's supposed to be though, so it's okay.

 

They totally got Violet's character totally wrong which was my big gripe of the movie.

 

Eat shit, Bob.

 

I didn't write that.

[AndrewTS 0]

Yuna: Ebert, that bastard! How dare he criticize Johnny Depp!

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

The buildup to the kids finding the golden tickets seemed really rushed compared to the first movie.

 

I really liked Wonka's first meeting with the kids in the new version though, the puppets catching on fire and that song were quite funny and it was better than arguing over signing a contract. And I thought it was cool that Depp's Wonka treated the kids horribly from the outset.

 

I really did miss all of Wonka's songs though, although I doubt Depp could have done them 1/2 as well as Wilder and this really wasn't much of a musical. I thought the Oompa Loompas' songs were better, but the music drowned out some of the lyrics. As far as they are concerned, I still cant decide which version I like, but I think the originals were creepier and probably would have fit in more in the newer version.

 

I dont think you can really compare the two endings since they relied on different aspects, and I really didn't mind the "wonka's father" storyline, as it sorta helped explain why he was so wierd.

 

Overall, I thought the special effects were awesome (the opening sequence was pretty cool) and I think they did a good job with the setting and atmosphere. I could sit here and debate which version I liked better, but ultimately I think they are almost two completely different movies that share the fact that they are both based on the same book, and I liked them both..

 

Oh, and I was pissed when the preview for the Corpse Bride started, I thought they were making a sequel to A Nightmare Before Christmas..and technically it might as well be. And Ice Age 2, the teaser for that was pretty funny too.

[Guest Olympic Slam]

I can't wait to see it. But I can't possibley see how this new one can be darker than the original. Can they top an acid trip/boat ride where we see a chicken's HEAD get stepped on? I mean, what the hell?

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Did they ever make a movie of The BFG? That's my favorite Dahl book. Either that or The Phantom Tollbooth. Unless he didn't write that. I haven't read it in ages. I'm associating the two for some reason.

[bob_barron 0]

Dahl didn't write the Phantom Tollbooth, and no, there is no BFG movie.

[bob_barron 0]

I suppose, the problem I have with this statement is that you are completely disregarding Gene Wilder's brilliant...BRILLIANT performance as a creepy, odd recluse in the original version.

 

I didn't even say I didn't like the first movie. I just didn't like a lot of the changes they made with the book. On it's own it's a fun movie with some great performances but when you compare it to the book- not so much. Wilder is fine as Wonka, but I don't like the singing.

 

I saw the new one tonoght and I left the movie relieved that they didn't shit all over the legacy of the first Wonka Movie, and the Book.

 

I didn't think they shit over the book, I just don't like Burton claiming the movie was going to be more authentic when Violet and Mike Teevee were completely different, and he adds in a needless subplot that almost kills the movie.

 

Bob, do us a favor, sport...stick to reviewing SNL episode's and Norm MACDONALD Vehicles...of which there is one, for good reason...he is NOT FUNNY.

 

Actually there are two. The movie Screwed is another Norm movie.

 

ALL in all ...a fun night at the movies. On par with the 1st movie...good for Roald Dahl Purists and SNL Fanboys like Barron to fap to as well.

 

Why are you so terrible?

 

God I hate You barron