*** Official CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan T.]

Mary Poppins can hardly be compared to CATCF either. It was a live action film, with some animation pasted in, again will well rounded character that carried acted like real people. It was in no way similar to the carboard cutouts wandering around in fantastical sets that we see in CATCF, and in fact, again, a LOT more similar to the 71 film.

 

[DavidPla]

Vastly superior film to the new one ... in your eyes. To me, the new film works much better than the '71 version both as an adaptation to the Roald Dahl book AND as a film. I always felt the '71 version was mediocre with some interesting ideas but really never fulfilled what it promised to do. I never felt that I was taking a magical journey watching the 71 version in which the new film succeeded greatly.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Mary Poppins flying in the sky and sliding up a stairway banister and walking on chimney smoke is acting like a real person?

Yes, I know you meant that the emotional context of the film is realistic. But my point is that the images are not always so.

I do think we're talking past each other here, and that we likely agree more than we disagree in principle, just not in our specific like/dislike of the two Charlie/Wonka films.

My point is that just because there is an emotional thematic or character trait does not mean that it isn't successful at stylized fantasy. All classic animated films with a standard fantasy narrative - going back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - have emotion and such "realism". The dwarfs crying at the end of Snow White because of her deathlike sleep is as "realistic" on an emotional level as you can get, yet the film is still narratively - and visually - a fairytale. The two are not mutually exclusive. One can have realistic emotion and stylized "cartoony" elements in the same animated film, and one can have the two in a live action film.

 

[Chris Will]

Not being a fan of the original film I was surprised at how much I liked Burton's version. I thought the movie was great and loved Depp's performance. I'll definitely be buying this on DVD.

 

[Jonathan T.]

Well, I guess I'll finish this. If it were not for Depps atrocious performance as Willy Wonka, I doubt all the other flaws would bother me nearly as much.

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

I agree with Jonathan: overall, Mel Stuart's film has it all over Tim Burton's film. Yes, it deviates from the letter of the book, as ALL FILM ADAPTATIONS DO (except, apparently, the Pendragon version of WAR OF THE WORLDS), but, as a huge fan of the book as well, I feel it captures the overall spirit of it 100 percent. I actually prefer Harper Goff's wonderfully expressionistic sets over the sets in the new film...I think they hold up well even today. And I don't think the psychedelic boat ride is a throwaway scene at all...it helps cement Wilder's off-kilter character and world. By the way, the classic lines uttered by Wilder on that boat ride are straight out of the book, thank you very much (with a few lines in the middle added), and were nowhere to be found in the new, supposedly "truer to the book" version. In the book, during this scene, the boat shoots into a pitch-dark tunnel, and the parents are frightened and start yelling at Wonka; the 1971 version seems much closer to this than the 2005 version. Other stuff from the book contained in the 1971 version but missing from the 2005 version:

Rainbow Drops (suck 'em and you can spit in 7 different colors)
Lickable Wallpaper (The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!)
Exploding Candy (for your enemies)
Everlasting Gobstoppers (suck 'em and suck 'em and suck 'em and they'll never get any smaller...at least I don't think they do...)
Fizzy Lifting Drinks (we all know what happens when you drink this stuff...)
Butterscotch And Buttergin (candy is dandy but liquor is quicker)

I don't see how a reasonable argument can be made that Burton's film is closer to Dahl's book than Stuart's film. I really don't.

I do like a few things about Burton's version, which I mentioned in the other thread; the two main bits of the book it was nice to see restored were the Nut Room and Prince Pondicherry's melting chocolate palace. The Nut Room sequence in particular was extremely well done. But Wonka's backstory, the lame ending that ties in with it, muffed important dramatic scenes, and Depp's performance really sink it.

Incidentally, as a side note, the Oompa Loompas were originally miniature African pygmys with bones in their hair; there's even a line spoken by Charlie that says, "Are they REALLY made of chocolate, Mr. Wonka?" The book was revised by Dahl in the early '70s, and they were changed to more politically-correct long-haired white-skinned bearded little people from Loompaland.

 

[Casey C.]

I was surprised that the movie uses "dollars" (when the store patrons offer to buy the golden ticket, and Charlie finds $10 in the snow -- although it's obviously not a U.S. $10 bill) because I was assuming that the factory and Charlie's house were in the UK. The film opens in the UK on Friday; I wonder if they filmed alternate dialogue using "pounds"?

 

[Jefferson Morris]

Saw this over the weekend, and while I enjoyed it, I thought the windup was better than the pitch - that is, the anticipation of getting into the factory was better than the trip through it. While the visuals are amped up, the narrative slows down.

I don't necessarily blame this on Depp, though. While I wasn't overly impressed with his performance, he did appear to be playing the role the way the script (and its flashbacks) suggested - as an eccentric, overgrown child fleeing the shadow of a domineering father. Wilder's Wonka was more mercurial and sinister. I wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more of that from Depp, but I do give him credit for taking it in a different direction.

This one is on the bubble for me as far as a DVD purchase goes. Yet another in a line of slightly disappointing summer movies. Sin City remains the only thing I've seen in a theater this year that really made an impact on me.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Jonathan T.]

I just realized that the screenplay was penned by the same guy that penned Big Fish, which explains it's general attrociousness. Bug Fish was one of the biggest wastes of time ever, with a completely incomrehensible storyline and more plot holes that you can chake a stick at. I HATE MOVIES where nothing makes sense, and you wait, almost uncomfortably for the end to explain it all, and it never does. Thankfulyl Charlie, being adapted from a very simple story by a truly talented writer dopesnt suffer in the same way. But it does suffer from one demensional characters, poor pacing, pointless flashbacks, and exsessive exposition.

And I made a lot of typos in this post, but sadly I have to beat the rish hour traffic right now, so I will have to let them pass.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I finally saw the film, and posted my full review in the review thread.

I have a hard time believing that some of you actually liked the Oompa Loompa songs. I found myself wanting to cover my ears, and I love loud music & Danny Elfman, but everything about those songs was horrible. If I wasn't listening very closely, I wouldn't have even heard the lyrics from the books, and I never did hear them in the Mike TeeVee song. Maybe it was partially the theater that I saw it in, but even if I had heard them, the songs would've still annoyed me to no end.

All in all, I found the film to be a fairly substantial let down.

 

[Tino]

I just saw Charlie And The Chocalate Factory today and was actually enjoying it very much, right up to the part where Willy Wonka opens his factory doors.

It then very quickly became a cold, unemotional, unimaginitive, joyless, very disappointing film.

Whether it is closer to the book is irrelevant to me since I never read it. But judged on a purely entertainment level, Mel Stuart's 1971 film is miles ahead of this one in practicaly every department. Acting, humor, character development, imagination, songs, etc..

It's not even close.

 

[DavidPla]

I have to say, upon reviewing the original film, how much better this version is. I can see the charm in Gene Wilder's performance but everything else about that version, including the songs, are so uninspired in my opinion. I am very thankful that a new respectful version is out and am grateful how great it really is.

I really don't see why the first film is considered to be such a classic. I would hold this version as a classic much more than that film.