Movie Review: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

The original, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was one my my favorite films growing up. Even today, if I'm surfing channels on TV and come across the film, I'll stop to watch it. So, I saw this contemporary remake with some trepidation.

Let's start out by saying that I think Johnny Depp is one of the best and most versatile actors around today... "Pirates of the Carribean," "Finding Neverland" both come to mind as examples of great roles for Depp.

"Charlie" (the movie) takes liberties with the original story by adding some character background about the chocolate-maker to let us know how he became who he is today. With an obsessive dentist father, who denies his son candy, the boy Wonka becomes himself obsessed with chocolate. How Wonka ends up looking like a combination of Prince (the clothes) and Michael Jackson (the complexion) is not explained.

There are all new musical numbers, and some slighly updated "bad child" characters (Mike TeeVee, for example, is a video game addict, rather than just a TV addict; and, Violet Beauregard is a Karate expert, for some unexplicable and unused reason).

All of the Oompa Loompas are played and digitally brought together by a single man, Deep Roy. I've read that he shot multiple version of the same scene in many instances instead of just having a single image of him being reproduced digitally. It was a little creepy seeing the identical person as all of the wee Wonka workers.

Speaking of creepy, let's talk about the plot itself and how it plays out. In this remake, Wonka is protrayed as a germ-phobic candymaker who clearly, if only slightly, enjoys seeing the demise of the bad children. In fact, there's some intimation early-on (based on Augustus Gloup's name being inserted in a song) that somehow Wonka planned the various accidents for the bad children. As we move along in the film, it does start to appear that Wonka is enjoying watching spoiled children get their come-uppance.

This adds a slighly malevolent tone... almost sadistic... to Depp's Wonka, which is decidedly different from Gene Wilder's portrayal of a more benevolent, if slighly unbalanced, Wonka.

This movie is all about Wonka, not about the children, and certainly not primarily about Charlie. Nonetheless, it's a very good picture. The visuals are beautiful. It still is fun to see how each spoiled child is dispatched ("Don't touch that squirrel's nuts," warns Wonka at one point to a demanding Veruca Salt). Once you reconcile Wonka as eccentric (at best) or clinical (at worst), I think you'll find this movie well worth your time (and money).