Poor Imagination

[NB: This review contains spoilers. But then again, if you've never seen the original film or read the book, spoilers are the least of your problems.] EVERYBODY has a particular film that is the ne plus ultra of his or her childhood. It may not be your first, or even necessarily your favorite, but it's the one film that hovered over your youth, that you watched time and again, and that still never fails to offer security blanket-like comfort. For Filmbrain that film is Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Gene Wilder, four naughty children, great songs, orange Oompa Loompas, and a factory full of endless wonder -- what child wouldn't love it? (Admit it, you also wished you were Charlie Bucket.) When talk of a remake first surfaced some years back, naturally Filmbrain was full of woe -- why would they bother? When it was revealed that Tim Burton would be directing, there were glimmers of hope -- surely the man who brought us Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetle Juice was an ideal candidate (actually, Filmbrain thought David Lynch would be a better choice). Then the rumors started flying around the Internet -- robot Oompa Loompas, Marilyn Manson as Wonka, etc. Then came Big Fish, which was syrupy-coated Burton, and a tremendous letdown for many of his fans. Would he ever be able to return to his darker, more playful former self? Well, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is finally here, and the good news is that it's far, far better than Filmbrain imagined it would be. However, Burton (as he did in Big Fish) drags the film down into an almost Spielbergian treatise on bad fathers and the importance of family. The best thing about the film is that it is faithful to Roald Dahl's original novel. Yes, this means no Slugworth testing the children's virtue, and no shenanigans with fizzy lifting drinks, but it does include the tale of Prince Pondicherry as well as the story of the cocoa-addicted Oompa Loompas. Another pleasant surprise is the cast -- the kids are all wonderful (four hateful little shits), as are their guardians, with actor David Kelly making a perfect Grandpa Joe. (However, is Augustus Gloop a CGI creation? His skin tone and facial features have a more-generated-than-real look that is quite off-putting.) Freddie Highmore (who starred with Depp in Finding Neverland) makes a fine Charlie, though Burton overplays the poor-kid as selfless martyr thing. The Oompa Loompas once again sing after each child's accident (using lyrics from the novel), and composer Danny Elfman has crafted four amusing songs, each in a different style, including the infectious Veruca Salt song, a pop-psych ditty that could very well be an outtake from the last Polyphonic Spree album. The early, pre-factory scenes have that wonderful Edward Gorey-esque look that Burton is (or was) known for, and the entire town is a cross between late Victorian and post-apocalypse. (A newspaper headline declares "High Levels of Pesticide in Water".) The slanted Bucket house, positioned on the edge of town and in the shadow of the factory, is simply perfect, as is everything leading up to Wonka's appearance. Then things change, and not for the better. Though the top hat and plum colored velvet tailcoat are present, the manner in which Burton and Depp decided to portray Wonka is both disturbing and more than a bit irritating. Instead of the Wilder's wry, tormented genius, he's now a fey manchild with a lilting voice -- think Dana Carvey as the Church Lady crossed with Crispin Glover. Michael Jackson comparisons are inevitable, though perhaps magnified given the recent trial. (Unlike Jackson, Wonka hates most children.) Depp has said that he was inspired by Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers, though there's no denying that Anna Wintour look. Far more misanthropic than anything Dahl wrote, he's completely lacking in the charm that allowed Wilder to get away with those insulting one-liners. To add insult to injury, Burton includes a series of flashbacks to give Wonka some back-story, and these moments bring the film to a screeching halt. Christopher Lee plays Wonka's father (mom doesn't appear to exist), a dentist who deprives young Willy of all sweets, and keeps him in a frightening array of orthodontic headgear. Is this the best John August (Go) could come up with? The world inside the factory is not nearly as imaginative as the world outside. The Chocolate Room is a dead ringer for the one in the original, but it looks even more like a soundstage. There's nothing particularly scary about the boat ride, nor is there anything remarkable about the other rooms. The Veruca Salt sequence (nut-cracking squirrels instead of golden-egg laying geese) is the one exception -- an unsettling scene that has a real nightmarish quality to it. Things progress through the factory pretty much by the book -- no surprises, but enough witty lines and funny scenes to keep it flowing nicely. Where Burton really blows it is at the end -- instead of leaving well enough alone, he feels the need to tack on an additional ten weepy minutes to teach us that family is more important than chocolate. Feh! A perfectly serviceable adaptation of a great kids novel spoiled by an unnecessary lesson in values. Filmbrain wishes Burton (and his pal Spielberg) would work out their daddy issues elsewhere. Still, there's a lot of fun to be had with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it's worth seeing for the Oompa Loompa music and dance numbers alone. After all, there are worse ways to spend two-hours this summer.

Comments

[Todd]

There ARE songs? Excellent. I was under the impression there weren't going to be, for some reason, and I've been telling everyone that it would suck for that reason. I guess I might have to go see this...

[Filmbrain]

Yes, the songs are great -- mostly because it gave Elfman a chance to let loose and write things that sound vaguely Oingo Boingo-ish at times.

[Adam]

Am I the only person who was freaked out big time by the original Willy Wonka? That kid going up the tube, and the kid shrinking, the other kid expanind, man, that was psychic damage for me as a child. It was a good kid's film, but it still messed with my sleep for a while.

Well, at least I wasn't the only one EXTREMELY disappointed in BIG FISH. Although my disappointment has a great deal to do w/ the White-washing politics of it. (Yes, Daddy, I'll just believe your lies, excuse me, myths, so as to ignore our country's history to enable a relationship with you and to purchase a nice house in the suburbs with a pool where I can pass on my father's lies, sorry, myths again, to my children. The End of History, indeed.)

[Filmbrain]

Oh yes....it was incredibly disturbing. The boat ride alone gave me nightmares for weeks -- but I was drawn to it still.

[Jay Blanchard]

I agree with Filmbrain that David Lynch would have been an interesting choice for director. I would have loved to have seen Terry Gilliam direct it.

[Josh]

Damn...I was hanging out with some friends with little taste the other day, and they gave me that exact same dillemma of "worse ways to spend two hours"

War of the Worlds isn't so bad though, provided you have someone to make fun of it with. Well, and if you managed to sneak a whole chicken into the theater to pass around.

[patry]

I want the old Johnny Depp back.

[dvd]

I agree with Filmbrain's review of this film almost wholeheartedly, although I did very much enjoy Christopher Lee's scenes. And those braces were as pure Burton as the sequences set outside the factory at the beginning of the film.

The part that irked me the most was the elevator. What a wonderful deprivation of our imagination those sequences were! Especially since we've already seen the exact same middling CGI effects once this year in another mildly pleasant adaptation, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

[Aaron Hillis]

I thought that was well. Funny enough, Cinesite was the F/X team behind both Charlie and Hitchhiker's...

[Aaron Hillis]

Make that AS, not was. Unless you're walking the dinosaur, in which case it's WAS, not was.

[Filmbrain]

So right about the elevator!

The scenes with Lee weren't bad (except for that final one) -- but they had no place in this film.

(Nice semi-obscure 80s reference Aaron. Took me a few minutes. . .)

[dvd]

Filmbrain, you mention that Big Fish was Spielbergian, which isn't too far from the truth, given that Spielberg was attached to it before Burton - but what did you think of the ending? The film never really impressed me until that final surreal story, which a.) was the last time I honestly cried in a movie and b.) was some of Burton's best honest-to-goodness directing in over a decade. And his love of Fellini movies was at its most evident there, too.

[Filmbrain]

By the film's end, I felt that the schmaltz had been poured on so think, that I was unable to feel anything.

The Fellini comment is interesting -- I have to think about that one for a while.

While it had the playfulness of Fellini, there was a certain disingenuity over the whole thing. Think of Big Fish versus Amarcord, for example.

[dvd]

Actually, Amarcord was exactly what I was thinking of - not through the whole movie, mind you, but in that closing fantasy sequence; it's sentimental surreality, but of a completely different sort than the frequently mawkish stuff that comes before it. And its blessedly effects-free (at least until the lame CGI fish shows up in the final shot).

Burton's been quoted a few times as saying that Fellini is one of his favorite filmmakers - not that anyone who's seen Pee Wee's Big Adventure wouldn't be able to guess that, of course.

[la depressionada]

wild strawberries is the film that hovered over my childhood -- followed by roma citta aperta a close second. i can't wait for the remakes of those.

i hate tim burton he's WAY TOO CURLY(and what a dickwad to nail that no-neck bonham-carter behind his hot g/f's back). too f'en curly. wouldn't he make goddard cringe don't you think?