Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

[poliphilo]

Tim Burton "dark"? "Playful" would be nearer the mark. Hitchcock is dark, Aldritch is dark; almost any director you care to name is darker than Burton.

I admire Ed Wood. I love the silliness of Mars Attacks. Otherwise I've been disappointed.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is dreadful.

It travesties Dahl. Dahl is never sentimental. You want dark? Dahl is dark. Burton can't handle him.

Bleeagh- the gloopiness of that ending. One hug from Daddy and everything is fine again.

Every other Hollywood movie these days seems to be about little lost boys and their daddies.

I have a word for you- a bright shiny new word; I just coined it:

Daddyporn.

Whatever happened to Mommy, by the way?

But enough of that. Johnny Depp is a pretty good actor. He's too good for most of the dreck he appears in. Here he impersonates Michael Jackson. Which raises "dark" issues that Burton sweeps under the carpet.

And all that great White Hunter stuff with the Oompah-loompahs- racist or what?

And there's too much CGI. Everything looks beautiful, but there's no energy. The more I see of CGI the more I hate it. The airbrushed sheen of it. Unreal. Fakey. It's killing the movies.

This is supposed to be a kids' film, so why isn't it more fun?

The Gene Wilder version was gaudy and vulgar but it was tons of fun. The songs were better too.

To recapitulate: Sentimental, evasive, racist, fucked-up, dull. Let's add misogynist. Mrs Burton (Helena B-C) makes a token appearance stirring the cabbage soup, but otherwise it's nothing but boys in clover.

Ooh, daddy; no-one can love me the way you do!

Comments

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

The worst bit about the whole Daddy element was that it was tacked on by Burton. It wasn't in the book at all! For some reason, Burton had to 'explain' why Wonka is the way he is. He also twisted the bit about Charlie having to give up his family to inherit the factory. As I recall, in the book it was Wonka's idea to get Charlie's family!

Burton seemed to be dealing with his own issues there, not Wonka's. (Although it did get Christopher Lee on the screen -- and while I didn't like the part his role had in the movie, I did enjoy him.)

"Whatever happened to Mommy?"
But that's a fairy tale motif. 'Everyone knows' that a truly present mother would never allow Bad Things to happen to her children. Thus, the Step Mother, or the dead mother, or the just-barely-present mother. And Wonka has always been a story about the boys: Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Wonka.

As for the Oompa-Loompas and rascism: that too is inherent in the book -- Wonka's great white savior bringing the aborigines out from their caterpillar-eating misery and making them happy factory workers who live on chocolate.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Daddy element certainly feels tacked on. The ending is so peremptory! Why do we have to understand Wonka anyway? He's a glorious monster. Glorious monsters don't need explaining.

Burton likes Lee. He keeps giving him cameos. But why won't he give him a nice, big, juicy role? Lee's a wonderful actor. He deserves better.

You're right about the fairytale motif. I only miss Mommy because Burton is so fixated on Daddy. In Dahl's original the issue doesn't really arise.

As for the racism- why, when he's prepared to mess with other aspects of the book, is Burton not prepared to adjust the Oompah-loompahs?