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CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Warner Bros./Village Roadshow, 2005
Directed by Tim Burton
Based on the Novel by Roald Dahl
Written by John August
Produced by Brad Gray and Richard D. Zanuck
Music and Songs by Danny Elfman
Cinematography by Philippe Rousselot
Edited by Chris Lebenzon
Production Design by Alex McDowell
Costumes by Gabriella Pescucci
Visual Effects Supervisor: Nick Davis
Cast
Johnny Depp (Willy Wonka)
Freddie Highmore (Charlie Bucket)
David Kelly (Grandpa Joe)
Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs. Bucket)
Noah Taylor (Mr. Bucket)
Missi Pyle (Mrs. Beauregarde)
James Fox (Mr. Salt)
Deep Roy (The Oompa Loompas)
Christopher Lee (Dr. Wonka)
Annasophia Robb (Violet Beauregarde)
Julia Winter (Veruca Salt)
Jordan Fry (Mike Teavee)
Philip Wiegratz (Augustus Gloop)
Geoffrey Holder (Voice of Narrator)
The film has only just appeared in theaters and already I have heard enough hornswaggle about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being too dark and scary for children. What twaddle. The film is no more dark and cynical than Dahl’s book, which pours on a kind of bleak cynicism that children actually love. It explains while Dahl remains so enormously popular among young readers and the adults who read to them. Maybe a few of the tiniest children won’t like watching a gang of squirrels swarm an obnoxious spoiled British brat and toss her down a garbage chute, but most kids won’t be able to get enough of watching this. I certainly laughed hysterically during the scene, one of the few the 1971 film version couldn’t duplicate from the novel because of the visual effects complexity.
Do most of the adults and children in the film come across as utterly obnoxious caricatures of human beings? Yep, and that’s just what Dahl wrote and that’s just what you get. Kids have adored the book for over five decades, and they’re going to love this movie. If you walk into the theater expecting to see Dahl’s book on screen, that’s almost exactly what you get. So the pundits and watchdogs should snarf down a
Willy Wonka chocolate bar and calm down about this film being “too dark.” Batman Begins is too dark for kids. This feels just right; like Dahl’s book, it gives children viewers credit for knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, right from wrong, and how obnoxious both kids and adults sometimes are—and how delicious it is watching them get their (non-violent) comeuppance.
It isn’t director Tim Burton’s masterpiece, but this new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes for a fun, weird fantasy dark ride, and it channels the spirit of the book near perfectly. Strangely, although the 1971 version with Gene Wilder, titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, also kept close to the novel, the two films make for startlingly different experiences. This has everything to do with Burton’s more gothic touch to the events and his deeper love of the bizarre.
Scoring Johnny Depp for the lead role of the surrealist candy manufacture and inventor Willy Wonka must have seemed like a perfect casting coup, but Depp’s performance doesn’t drive the film the way you might expect. Depp has some superb bits and plays well off of the other actors, but his Willy Wonka edges on being just a bit too weird. Depp tries to work too much quirky variety into the character with the result that Wonka turns into a cipher. Gene Wilder’s more manic but gentler-spirited Wily Wonka worked better on screen. The new script from John August makes one major departure from Dahl’s book. It gives Wonka a traumatic childhood background, and these flashbacks damage the character and slow down the film in a few unfortunate places, particularly the elongated ending. On the plus side, these scenes do allow for the inclusion of Christopher Lee (as Willy Wonka’s candy-loathing dentist father), an actor who could easily fit into any Roald Dahl adaptation or Tim Burton film.
But Depp’s unevenness can’t harm a film with such a feverish visual imagination and a pitch-perfect supporting cast. The five child actors who play the lucky winners of the Golden Ticket Hunt to get a tour of Wonka’s mysterious factory all turn in spot-on performances. Along with Charlie’s sweet Grandpa Joe (David Kelly), Violet Beauregarde’s overachieving mother (Missi Pyle), and Veruca Salt’s industrial aristocrat Dad (James Fox), these performances really power the film along the sugar-highway.
The Gang of Four
Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) and Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb)
Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) and Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry)
Our Hero
Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore)
Freddie Highmore’s performance in the sticky-sweet glop Finding Neverland was so precocious and outright bad that I didn’t have much hope for him here. But Depp knew what he was doing when he recommended Tim Burton cast Highmore as Charlie, because the young British actor hits all the right notes and knows how to win audience sympathy without making too much of an effort. (If only the director of Finding Neverland had realized this, he could have laid off on the corn and perhaps I wouldn’t have detested that film as much).
Contrariwise, the other four child actors do great jobs at making the audience completely loathe them. They represent everything detestable about rotten kids, the sorts we hated as children when we had to go to school with them, and the types we can’t stand as adults whenever we have the misfortune of running into them. (I’ve taught elementary school, so I’ve had more encounters with these four child-types than I would ever wish on any human.) Behold: the greedy pig, the spoiled rich brat, the butt-kisser, and the wiseass. Wonka’s twisted factory is a benign death-trap for these brats, and the young thespians make darned sure we want to see them get their just deserts in the factory’s perils. I particularly loved watching Mike Teavee have at fit at Wonka because he only see his invention of teleportation as a means to zap candy bars through the television. And every snobby demand out of Veruca Salt’s mouth (“Daddy, I want another pony!”) is a delight.
The production design and visual effects are par for the course for a Tim Burton film: superb. Burton crafts all his films from a confectioner’s point-of-view, so matching him to a whacked-out-candy factory could not have been more ideal. The movie in some places visually references the 1971 version, but deepens the imagery with Burton’s dark 
fairytale view. The opening sequence, a VFX ride through the making of Wonka candy bars in an automated but shadowy factory, shows how Burton’s visual style has re-imagined the novel for the screen, while still keeping the book’s integrity. Each room in the factory gives the production design team a new world without limits in which to play around, and they have a blast. The sterile white TV room also lets Burton toy with some strange references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. (References? Heck, Kubrick’s film plays right on the television sets, with a bar of chocolate standing in for the monolith!) The large budget and technical advances allow the filmmakers to include scenes from the book that the older version couldn’t, such as the melting Indian palace and the previously mentioned “squirrel assault” (my personal favorite moment in the movie). The visual scope also makes epic scenes like Mr. Salt forcing his nut factory employees to work exclusively on opening candy bars to find a golden ticket for his demanding daughter much more effective.
Danny Elfman, who has scored every Tim Burton feature film except for Ed Wood gets to trip back to his Oingo Boingo past and compose some bizarre musical theater productions. The Oompa Loompa songs from the book now form hilarious dance numbers, with Dahl’s lyrics put in the context of different pop-music genres. Elfman performs the vocals for the dancing Oompa Loompas (all played by Deep Roy through visual effects trickery) as they celebrate the fall of each of the obnoxious brats. “Veruca Salt” is the most memorable number, done as a light ballad; “Mike Teavee” gets the hard rock treatment. Elfman obviously had a great time writing the score.
The Gene Wilder Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory still remains a childhood film classic, but Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shows that there’s always room for a new version of a great book—especially with talent like this behind and in front of the cameras.
Welcome to Devo’s Chocolate Factory! Also doubles as Joker’s Axis Chemical Plant
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