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

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Well, I thought it was fabulous. I also thought that, silly business with Christopher Lee aside, and the "leave your family" thing, it was a lot more faithful to the original than the Gene Wilder version. I thought the "leave your family" twist worked well with the more self-centered and otherwise clueless Wonka character that Depp created. I rather suspect the only reason Roald Dahl didn't include that was because he didn't think of it. If he'd thought of it he'd have put it in, I betcha.

I'm sure that part of that hunter thing was an echo of Depp's Raoul Duke character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In fact, I saw several echoes of previous Depp films there.

Anyhow, I saw it twice on the big screen. Once on opening night and once in the local IMAX, which is a really big screen.

I liked the Ooompa Loompas. I also liked the squirrels.

And I thought the reason for the Daddy/Dentist business was pretty obvious. Burton used every scrap of dialog and plot in the book, and added all those dentist scenes, and still only had an 89 minute film.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the echo of Fear and Loathing- a Depp film I well and truly love.

Otherwise, we agree to differ. Burton may be faithful to Dahl's text, but he just doesn't get his spirit. He imposes his own trademark gothicism. He is funereal where Dahl is chirpy.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd differ on that characterization, too. I would say the film is extremely chirpy in a gothic sort of a way. But then I was guffawing at most of the Ooompah Loompah numbers.