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

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the new version, and I probably won't. I kind of suspected everything you just said about it. It looks creepy but not in a fun way.

When my son and stepdaughter were lobbying to see it last summer, I said, "You do know that it's based on a book, right?" They responded with shock and awe. So we climbed into my giant bed every night, opened up my ancient copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I read it to them, a chapter a night. They were rapt. And my stepdaughter was almost THIRTEEN at the time! They literally hooted out loud when Charlie found the golden ticket, they were so thrilled.

And somehow they forgot about seeing the movie. :-) Although I'd rent them the original if they wanted.

And you are right on about CGI.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Burton's Charlie is creepy in the wrong way. He just doesn't get Dahl. Dahl is dark, but jaunty and cheery with it. Burton imposes a funereal pace and goes easy on the jokes. And Depp, brilliant actor though he is, is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dahl is brilliant. A great children's author- right up there with Carroll and Milne.