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Review:
 Raold
Dahl has always been a bit of a misanthrope. His books for
children are always gory and icky, the characters cartoonish to
the extreme. That's part of why they've stood the test of time, I
guess. They've made films of most of his books, and some of them,
like this, has been made more than once.
The films is extremely simple in plot: Our eponymous hero, one
Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore), who lives in a wreck of a house
on some very expensive urban real estate with his parents (Helena
Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor) and grandparents, wins a tour of a
chocolate factory. He goes on it with some other kids and their
parents, The end.
It reminds me of watching the Formula 3 racing championships in
Monte Carlo a few months back, Lots of people went to see, not the
cars go racing around the track, but for some of the cars to spin
out of control and hit the wall.
The point of this exercise is to watch a group of people we don't
like get almost drowned in molten chocolate, thrown down giant
garbage chutes, turned into giant blueberries and the like. The
Germans have a term for that sort of thing: “Schandenfreude.”
The master of Schandenfreude is none other than the notorious
Willy Wonka(Johnny Depp), who had fired his entire staff many
years before and hasn't been seen since, although his candy bars
keep coming out, a very mysterious place indeed. It is he and his
legion of Oompas Loompas(Deep Roy, multiplied by computer), who
wreak holy havoc on the four evil children(Julia Winter, Philip
Wiegratz, Annasophia Robb and Jordan Fry) who win the other four
golden tickets and their parents(Franziska Troegner, James Fox,
Missi Pyle and Adam Godley) and Charlie's spare grandfather(David
Kelly) look on in horror and innumerable Deep Roys go into a
musical number celebrating each brat's demise.
Indeed, this is a horror movie. Fairy tales are usually about
horrible things happening to people who aren't all that nice, and
this bunch are all arrogant jerks….except Charlie, who's good and
wonderful in every way.
The acting is great. This is Johnny Depp's greatest triumph as
yet. He plays Willie Wonka as sort of a Michael Jackson, except
that he's deliberately phony, speaking in a singsong voice
generally used by kindergarten teachers. He's entirely opaque, and
here's where Tim Burton and writer John August stumble.
They insert flashbacks in which a young Willie rebels against his
candy-phobic dentist father(Christopher Lee). We don't need that.
It's not WEIRD enough. It wasn't in the book and there was a good
reason for that.
Dahl wrote a sequel, and there's really no room for it at the end
of the film. The 1971 version, which is inferior in all sorts of
ways left off on the right note.
But this is something you've got to see while waiting for Harry
Potter VI to arrive at the bookstore.
Eric Lurio
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