movies: charlie and the chocolate factory

"Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, the amazing chocolatier..."

Three guess which movie I went to see tonight?

Yep, you guessed it... Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

And I have to say that I loved every minute of it... well, almost every minute... but I'll get to the nitpicks in a minute.

Johnny Depp never ceases to amaze me... how can one man be so great at everything he does? One minute he's Captain Jack, then he's J.M. Barrie, then he's this weird, weird, weird Marilyn Manson-eske Wonka. Damn but he's talented! And Freddy Highmore... there's a boy who's hopefully going to be a major talent for many many years to come.

Of course, being a Tim Burton film, it definitely had the Burton stamp all over it... just the visual style (Tim and his spirals again) and the generally "dark" feel of the whole thing... plus the flashback to Wonka's childhood, and a large chunk of the stuff from the end of the movie... I need to get hold of the original book and reread it.

I spent the whole movie grinning, which is a rarity I have to say... even movies I've liked I don't think I spent the WHOLE movie grinning. There were only a couple of little nitpicks...

The major one was the use of the term "candy bar"... a solid chocolate block is NOT a candy bar... it's a chocolate bar... and having English actors using the term "candy bar" was very off-putting. I know Tim Burton (and probably the guy who wrote the script) is American, but still...

The only other complaint was the fact that I had trouble hearing the words to pretty much all of the Oompa Loompa songs... I don't know if that's a problem with the cinema I was in or a general problem with the movie... but it was a little annoying. Having said that, I enjoyed the actual music of the songs enough that I forgot I was supposed to be hearing the words.

Compared to the 1971 version, this version is a little less sickly sweet (especially Charlie), and for the most part its much less campy (ie, not a musical)... although Johnny's Wonka is far, far, far weirder than Wilder's.

Overall though, I was very impressed.

yani's rating: 4 twisted chocolatiers out of 5