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Printer-Friendly ModeTim Burton recreates the flavorful world of Wonka
July 19, 2005 —
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pure spectacle, an imaginative vision well-wrought by Tim Burton. While I cannot make comparisons to the original, for I have never seen it, this new film does work, at least for the most part. By keeping itself focused on performances by Johnny Depp, Freddy Highmore, and Deep Roy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory maintains quality, although its taste is probably not the equal of some of Wonka's candies.
The story follows Charlie, played by Highmore. Charlie is an underprivileged youth who is ensorcelled by the sight of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, which resides at the opposite end of the street from his little house.
Charlie lives with his parents, along with both sets of grandparents, who all share the same bed. The house they live in is the main set of the film, besides the chocolate factory, and it has that dreamlike, yet familiar quality that Tim Burton movies always seem to bring out in.
Grandpa Joe, played by David Kelly, tells Charlie about how years ago he used to work for Wonka in his factory, until suddenly all the workers were dismissed, and the factory was closed. Yet Wonka continued to produce candy, and now has sent a message out that five golden tickets have been placed in five Wonka bars sent around the world. The children who find them will be invited to an exclusive tour of the Wonka factory.
Charlie finds one ticket, and the other four are recovered by children who are the opposite of him – snotty, spoiled, mean-spirited children who do not seem nearly as grateful as him for the opportunity they have just been given.
Once in the chocolate factory, we are treated to visual after visual after visual. Rich, enormous rooms that are fully edible, weird inventions for making weird and unheard of candies, and even a room with squirrels trained to crack nuts for candy bars.
We also find the Oompa Loompas, all played by Deep Roy, in a hilariously stern performance. Their stone-faced song and dance routines may well be the film's most enjoyable moments. Oompa Loompas, of course, are little men from a far away place who run the factory with Wonka.
Wonka himself is a strange one. Depp plays him as a nutty recluse, haunted by his strict upbringing as a child. Pale-faced and oddly dressed, Wonka seems no less outrageous than his factory. He is occasionally a bit frightening as well, maintaining his childlike attitude and otherworldly calmness even in light of terrible things happening to the children (events which he and the Oompa Loompas strangely don't seem surprised by at all – almost as if they were planned out).
The visuals are mostly excellent. The different sections of the factory visited by the children are all convincing and interesting environments. The city surrounding the factory is a wintry and old fashioned place, calling to mind Charles Dickens. The only times the visuals fail are in the scenes depicting travel through the factory via a glass elevator, which travels in all directions, up, down, sideways, even diagonal. Often during travel, environments seem entirely rendered by CGI, and not nearly as thought-out and imaginative as those seen in the rooms we spend time in. They look average, and detract terribly from the wonder of the rest of the settings, as though they belong in another movie entirely.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is certainly entertaining. The meaning of the story, involving the importance of family, is mostly lost amongst the madness of the trip into the factory, and a scene near the end involving Wonka and his father seems rather detached from the rest of the movie, and doesn't make sense when put alongside the fate of Wonka we see at the very end.
There is no real climax to the film, and no particular memorable event to recall. Rather, the movie is one relatively exciting journey which never wholly displeases, nor fully immerses or endears itself to the audience.