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I've also heard this though the original film really isn't that much different from the book. With the exception of Charlie's Dad being gone and the children only bringing one parent (and using geese instead of the squirrels) the film pretty much follows the book.
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Not really true. There are some major differences, especially with Charlie's characterization:
Basically, in the book, character development is secondary to plot development, but in the movie, Charlie's character is a little more than the polite impoverished kid who gets lucky because he does nothing wrong.
Another major change involves political correctness. In Dahl's original book (printed in 1964,
not the revised edition printed in 1973, which is after the movie was released), the Oompa-Loompas were "a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from 'the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.'" They were not orange-skinned, green-haired midgets from Loompaland. When
… the Great Glass Elevator was published, a revised edition of
CatCF was also published, in which the Oompa-Loompas became dwarves with golden brown hair and rosy white skin from the mythical Loompaland.
In fact, there was a
huge controversy over the book. It's important to note that this essay was published
after the movie's release, but
before the revised book was published.
Citation: Most of these ideas come from
"Charlie and the Political-Correctness Factory" by Cassandra Pierce. I haven't read the book since I was a boy, but once I found out about this controversy, it really intrigued me, so I've been reading up on it.
