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First, let's talk about the bad. To start with, Danny Elfman, outlandish composing genius and soul-brother to director Tim Burton, commits the cardinal sin of overindulgence and sings -- well, warbles -- the songs so important to the film's narrative, rendering them suitably twisted, but almost entirely incomprehensible. Then again, given the quality of Roald Dahl's devilish lyrics, that might have actually been the filmmaker's intent.
Second, we're left wondering about the problems Timmy had with Burton Sr, because there's an entirely unnecessary father-son story arc here again, straight on the heels of the director's last pater-kiddo film, Big Fish. This is a big error, especially in terms of the spirit of the book -- Willy Wonka does not need a back-story, thank you very much.
Thankfully, because of Christopher Lee, the decidedly un-Dahl-like father is alive enough.
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Finally, weighing in at 115 minutes, the film achieves the rare distinction of seeming too short. We could have done with another half hour, Tim. Then again, maybe then we wouldn't want to watch the film another half-dozen times.
Okay, that's it for the brickbats.
Wow.
We've seen Tim Burton play with his stuff of breathtakingly lit cobwebs before, his films comfortably straddling nightmare and joyride, but this is where he has pulled out all the stops. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is a film very hard to describe, but suffice it to say that your eyes will have the time of your life, and that you've never ever seen anything like this before.
At every stage of this fabulous pastiche of set pieces, Tim The Defiant wards off convention. In a world fuelled by CGI-boxes and blue-screen, the man has constructed multimillion-dollar sets that can only be described as mega. Each backdrop to this grand circus is painstakingly perfect, and jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The sets are characters in their own right.
The story, for those of us who haven't read the immortal children's bestseller or laughed it up at the 1971 Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, is essentially Roald Dahl's deliciously mean-spirited take on some vices he felt were truly unfit, and the evergreen story of a poor dreamer with the world ahead of him, waiting to be bitten into.
In a marketing superstroke, über-enigmatic chocolateer Willy Wonka sends out a notice to the world saying that there will be five golden tickets hidden inside his candybars. The five children who find these win a guided tour inside Wonka's factory, a lifetime supply of Wonka's glorious chocolate, and one of them gets a special prize beyond imaginable limits. The world goes insane, and from Marrakesh to Tokyo, Wonkabars are snapped up instantly.
The winners emerge, and they are an eclectic lot indeed: a gluttonous German kid who almost ate his ticket; an overachieving American girl; a snobbish English brat; and an insufferable know-it-all who cracked the system, a boy with the now-ubiquitous initials, M T V. Did someone mention racial stereotypes? Well, then, I guess we'll talk about the Oompa Loompa tribe in a little while, then. But, you say, weren't there five tickets? So who got the fifth?
Why, the hero. Charlie Bucket, played by Freddie Highmore to saccharine perfection, even though he doesn't look remotely undernourished. Charlie lives a life of absolute poverty, and wistfully constructs models of Wonka's factory with toothpaste caps. The Buckets live a miserable life, and Charlie's father has just lost his job. With a typically Dahl-like hint at incest, the grandparents have similar names (Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine). And with a combined age of 381, they're not helping the family coffers much.
Egged on by the superbly enthusiastic Grandpa Joe (David Kelly with an irresistible performance), young Charlie finds the shining ticket to change his life, and introduce him to the most mysterious man in the world, the man who makes the world's finest chocolate, and the man who must be some sort of incredible magician -- Mr Willy Wonka. Why, as the kids file into his factory, he has his own narcissistic intro song, with puppets and all. The best darn guy who ever lived, Willy Wonka, there he is, they croon before bursting into flames.
And then he arrives. Purple of hand, buck of teeth, and nimble of step, comes the unmatchable Mr Depp. This is a nightmarish character to play, and an inspired version indeed. While Gene Wilder's 1971 Wonka was sarcastic and more than a trifle creepy, Depp's Wonka is visibly mentally twisted, has the conversation skill of a reasonably ineloquent nine year old, and is pretty damn clumsy. He also, as an irate Charlie Bucket says, 'has a weird haircut.'
Oh yeah, and that's not the weirdest thing about him. Armed with some very groan-worthy one-liners, this is a character near impossible to essay on screen.
And we say 'near' impossible, because Depp is astonishing. As they stand in the magical interiors of the factory, near the lavish chocolate waterfall amid the idyllic delicacies, Wonka encourages them to eat a little something. 'Everything in this room is eatable. Even I'm eatable,' he says, provoking a stunned silence among parent, theatre-goer and Dahl fan alike, before he resumes with perfect timing, 'but that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies.'
Which might not include the Oompa Loompas, a tiny people originally from Loompaland. In a clever barter, Willy got the cocoa bean addicts to come and work for him, and be paid in chocolate. This efficient, all-singing, all-dancing (and, if we're to take Wonka's dubious word, quickly improvising) tribe is played fascinatingly by Deep Roy, and the man deserves special mention. Applause he gets automatically.
The laughs come fast and furious, but you might not hear most of them since you'll be sitting in a theatre with your mouth hanging open most of the time. Dahl's writing is savage and merciless, and contains more than subtle racist themes. Is it still a children's film? Yes, a hundred times yes, because the story is still about being good and right and sticking to your beliefs, instead of trying to be a pig and glug freely from forbidden rivers of chocolate, tempting as they may seem. Basically, don't ask too many questions and just follow the man in the plum-coloured coat and top hat. Except, of course, when he's actually wrong.
You know a movie rocks when Johnny Depp keeps giggling and Tim Burton pays an obvious, over-the-top homage to Stanley Kubrick with a candybar.
Punters of psychedelia, take heed. Charlie is the trippiest visual extravaganza in a very, very long time, and I recommend repeated diving into the chocolate theatres. Fantastic stuff. The performances are indubitable, the music is characteristically Elfman and the nightmares it may elicit are a bonus that would make Dahl proud. Most adults with a sense of whimsy will love this film, while the sternest of us will crack up into smiles and just grin at the universal goodness on Charlie's surface.
And all of us will leave theatres hunting for dessert.
