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

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, is Helena B-C Mrs. Burton nowadays? See what happens when I don't read the supermarket rags? Last I heard, she was busy breaking up Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I found the entire movie so heavy and depressing that it haunted me for hours--that claustrophobic factory with its ugly scenery and weird Johnny Depp, who was irritating and creepy without being amusing, ever.

You have it exactly about CGI: "The airbrushed sheen of it."

[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.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

I agree about the movie, but the misogyny and racism came straight from the book, I think! Dahl originally wrote the Oompa Loompas as African pygmies, and when people complained he re-wrote them as midget hippies. And the adult women in the book were just tacked on.

I loved Johnny Depp's performance, but the things I liked about it had little to do with the movie that was going on around it. If he was going to be *so* much like Michael Jackson, the movie really needed to run with all the associations that brings up.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen it, probably won't. Wilder is the Wonka of my youth, and I'd rather not sully that.

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

i so regret seeing this version of the movie. gah! i found the whole thing completely disapointing. it lacked all the creepy, beautiful ambiance of the first film. depp, whom i usually adore, was somewhere between boring and annoying. the computer reproduced oompa loompas were terrible. i think the money they spent on that would have been much better spent on... *gasp* hiring more than one damn actor. i felt gipped. and the songs! horrible.

really, i think the only redeeming moment may have been the squirrels. (which were actually dozens of trained animals!)

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

I know I'm in a minority here, but I preferred the remake immensely over the Gene Wilder version, which just seemed to dispense with anything sinister in preference to saccharinising the whole thing. Dahl's stuff is like a real fairy tale: there's a morality play in there somewhere, but plenty else going on besides.

[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.

[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.

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

You're delightful when you're being bitter. :)