Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (DVD)

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Years ago I read a review of "Willy Wonka" that said it was the kind of movie parents love to drag their kids to and both of them, parents and kids, get bored. I doubt it. I never met anyone personally who didn´t like this 1971 children´s fantasy, youngsters or adults. In fact, it may be the sort of children´s film that is as much or more appreciated by older teens and adults as by younger kids.

Last year a student in one of my junior English classes mentioned aloud, for reasons I can´t remember, the Oompa-Loompas, and everyone in the room recognized and seemed to appreciate the little people from the story. In the last thirty years the whole movie has come to be officially institutionalized in our society, like "Snow White" and "Bambi." It is, in fact, a modern classic, and Warner Bros. have appropriately commemorated its thirtieth anniversary with two new special editions.

The structure of "Willy Wonka" is much the same as "The Wizard of Oz." A child goes on a magical journey filled with laughter, adventure, fantasy, and songs and learns a valuable lesson along the way. Children´s writer Roald Dahl ("James and the Giant Peach," "The Witches") adapted the screenplay from his own book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and the film was directed by Mel Stuart ("If It´s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," "One Is A Lonely Number"). Dahl was always a writer with more than children in mind, which is why "Willy Wonka" is so bizarre and entertaining for adults. It stars Gene Wilder as the world´s greatest chocolate maker, a mysterious figure who has long ago locked himself in his factory and hasn´t been seen since. But for reasons that only become clear at the end of the movie, he decides to hold a contest. Inside five Wonka Bars he has hidden Golden Tickets worth a trip inside his immense candy factory, plus a lifetime supply of chocolate. The world goes nuts trying to find the prize tickets.

The first person to strike gold is young Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner), a greedy, gluttonous, sloppy little German boy who is always eating. The second person to find a ticket is Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), a rich, spoiled, selfish, nasty brat. The third person is Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), a pushy, bad-mannered child who holds the world´s record for chewing the same piece of gum. The fourth is Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen), a rude smart aleck, who watches television all day long. The fifth winner is our hero, Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), an honest, helpful, loving, hardworking lad.

The first third of the film takes us through the events leading up to their entrance into the candy factory, and it´s the part of the film I´ve always enjoyed the most. Charlie is so poor he lives in a one-room shack with his mother and both pairs of grandparents. The four grandparents occupy a single bed that they haven´t gotten out of in years. When Charlie wins his prize, he´s allowed to take one person with him and he chooses his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson). Joe is not only a grandfather, he´s Charlie´s best friend and supporter: "Don´t worry, Charlie, you´ll find a Golden Ticket," he says, never giving up hope for his grandson.

The setting is never told, but it´s clearly a storybook German town. The actual location shots were done in Munich, the city´s gas works filling in for the chocolate factory. Once inside the factory, Mr. Wonka is anything but what we expect, and Wilder has a field day playing a character we sometimes think has a screw loose. His utter composure as each child is devilishly dispatched--one up a chocolate flue, a second going down a "bad egg" sorter, another turned into a giant blueberry, and yet a fourth disintegrating into television atoms--is a joy.

Finally, there are the songs, with lyrics and music by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley: "The Candy Man," "Cheer Up, Charlie," "I´ve Got a Golden Ticket," "Pure Imagination," "Oompa-Loompa-Doompa-De-Do," and "I Want It Now." Not all of it gels well, and some of the film can seem mean-spirited, but it isn´t meant to be. Who can deny that the overall response is positive, playful fun?

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Now, about those two Special Editions I mentioned earlier. To celebrate the film´s thirtieth birthday, Warners decided to issue the film in two separate versions, one in full-frame and one in widescreen. They had already released the film on DVD several years earlier in a double-sided format that included a widescreen version on one side and a standard-screen version on the other. This time out they wanted to add some bonus material, discussed below, and were apparently faced with the problem of how to accommodate it. Since Warners use a snapper case, there was little chance of including a second disc, the packaging not permitting it; and since a double-sided, dual-layered DVD is costly and hard to manufacture, something had to go in order to fit in the new bonuses on a single-sided, dual-layered disc. Obviously, some anguished decision-making went on among the Warner brass: Do we get rid of the widescreen or the standard screen to make room for everything else, or do we offer two different packages? Now, you or I wouldn´t find such a decision difficult. The DVD-buying public long ago made their preference clear for anamorphic widescreen. But the problem was not so cut-and-dried as that. Nothing is easy. I was told by a Warners´ spokesperson that the company´s research shows that buyers like to purchase "family-oriented films" in the full-frame format. I question their data and how long ago it was taken, but it´s what prompted the studio to issue the two separate releases about two months apart.