...this new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes for a splashy, eccentric movie treat.
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Why in the world would any filmmaker in his right mind want to mess around with an acknowledged movie classic? Especially a filmmaker who had already had limited success with a remake of "Planet of the Apes"? I suppose the answer lies only with the filmmaker himself, Tim Burton, who is admittedly a little peculiar; and when he's got his favorite actor, Johnny Depp, and his favorite composer, Danny Elfman, working with him, the temptation to redo an old hit must have been irresistible
Anyone over the age of five is obviously going to compare the new 2005 version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with the older 1971 movie, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Probably only a filmmaker with Burton's imagination, creativity, ability, temperament, and supreme confidence would put himself in the position of allowing people to make such a comparison.
In any case, the two films, both based on Roald Dahl's best-selling children's novel, are really quite different while still being quite a bit alike. I love the older version as much as anyone, and probably like you I sort of resented Tim Burton's thinking he could improve upon it. Which is just the point: Burton doesn't improve upon it. Instead, he reinterprets it.
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is the first film I've gone to in years where most of the theater audience applauded at the end. And it was a large audience for a matinee show, made up of a diverse mix of ages from children through teens and adults. This is not to suggest, however, that the audience positively thought Burton's movie was better than the older version; the applause may simply have been a sign of relief that Burton hadn't screwed things up.
Sure, I missed the old songs, and I missed Gene Wilder as Wonka and Peter Ostrum as Charlie and Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe. They could never be replaced. But the new actors in the roles acquit themselves nicely, especially young Freddie Highmore (recently of "Finding Neverland") as Charlie. Indeed, the whole first third of the film, the story of the destitute Bucket family, comes off pretty much the same as in the earlier version, almost identical in tone, with a little more background on the father losing his job at a toothpaste factory and the exclusion of several musical numbers.
You remember the plot: Willy Wonka owns the biggest candy factory on the planet, and he offers five lucky winners of a golden ticket (hidden somewhere in his Wonka Bars) a personally guided tour through his plant, with one of the five winners getting an extra-special gift.
The five winners, all children, who visit the factory are Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), a fat, spoiled kid who eats candy continuously; Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), the whiney, spoiled daughter of a wealthy British nut packer; Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), the arrogant, spoiled daughter of an American Barbie Doll; Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), a surly, spoiled video-game player; and our young hero, the unassuming Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore). They and the one guest they are each allowed to bring with them are in for the adventure of a lifetime.
While the special effects are better than ever in Burton's version, I didn't find the interior of the chocolate factory any more magical or spectacular than in the old movie; and even though I enjoyed actor Deep Roy playing all of the Oompa-Loompas (through the magic of computer duplication), I did not find Danny Elfman's music doing much for me. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but there was nothing in the new musical numbers to match the catchy innocence of the "Candy Man" or the Oompa-Loompa songs. I'd be willing to bet that very few people who had just seen the new movie could hum or whistle even a couple of notes from any but maybe a single song. Still, Elfman's music is adequate and up-to-date, and I'm undoubtedly making a relatively minor beef of the issue.
The big point of contention for most viewers, whether they've seen the older version or not, will be Johnny Depp's portrayal of Wonka. It's just plain bizarre. Depp's Wonka is horrified at the touch of children and cringes at the very thought of parents, his strange behavior and quirky mannerisms explained only at the end of the story. He's comes off as a cross between Michael Jackson and Tom Hulce's Amadeus. Ironically, while the first movie had Willy Wonka's name in the title, it was largely about Charlie. Now that Roald Dahl's original title is used and Charlie's name is back in it, the movie is more about Willy Wonka. In the new rendering, Wonka is given a background story through a number of flashbacks, plus an entire concluding episode all to himself. We learned nothing of Wilder's Wonka character in the first movie and only a little of Charlie's. We learn no more about Charlie in this new version than in the previous one, either, but we learn a heck of a lot more about Wonka. What's more, once Depp's Wonka is introduced into the new movie, the movie is all his; the boy and the grandfather practically disappear from our thoughts.
Notwithstanding some odd reactions during seemingly stressful moments, Wilder's Wonka remained ever the gentle, amiable, twinkling character throughout, with the exception of a brief moment at the end when he pretended to be angry. Yet Depp's Wonka seems genuinely conflicted. Being shut away from people for so long, he is unable to relate to them in normal terms, his behavior so erratic he resorts to reading his comments to them from note cards prepared in advance, and his language is so time warped it's still framed in the verbal expressions of his youth: "Groovy," "Keep on truckin'". Therefore, to me Depp's Willy Wonka is the central figure in the new movie, much more so than Wilder was in the first film. And by the end of the new movie, it's Wonka's character that has transformed as a result of his experiences, not Charlie's. It's true that Charlie's circumstances change, but not his personality.
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