Paperjam

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Film // Jim // 15th August 2005

I’m on the train back from London and a man who can only be named as “Craig” (due to his desire to avoid Interpol for at least another month) phones to ask whether I would like to join him and some friends to see the new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This sounds like fun so its back home and a dash up to the neo-something or other splendour of the Leamington Apollo – the cinema where they like to tut loudly and say “You have to pay for that drink at a different till”.
Fortunately the film is on in the big screen, rather than one of the small shed-like efforts where you can’t hear a bloody thing and develop deep vein thrombosis before the fucking trailers are over.

Ahem.

Anyway the main reasons most people will want to see this film are:
A - Everyone has read the book when they were a kid.
B - Everyone likes Johnny Depp.

C and TCF: Faithful, mean spirited

In terms of point A Tim Burton has probably been a touch more faithful to the book than the drugged up 70s version with Gene Wilder, there are no flowery incidental songs and although things get pretty sucrose at points it is still quite dark and mean spirited. The film unfolds an excellent, dark, explanatory first segment before steaming through the main cautionary plot: a bunch of mostly repellent children are horribly undone by their own character faults.

Turning to point B, Depp gives another enjoyably mad, over the top performance that you can’t quite picture anyone else managing. Having done a two-hour long Keith Richards impression in Pirates of the Caribbean (and what an awful film that would have been without him), here he has been described as doing a Michael Jackson. However I think a more accurate comparison is Jack Nicholson in the Shining.

In every scene Depp’s Willy Wonka has a manic look in his eyes that suggests that being locked up in a cavernous factory with only a bunch of identical midgets and some repressed father issues for company has taken its toll. All work and no play makes Willy a dull boy and at times I was expecting an axe to appear so that the pesky kids could be finished off in double quick time without the need for the elaborate morality traps that befall the little bastards. It is worth noting that he is nearly matched by the overly competitive, former baton twirling mother in the track-suit - very scary indeed.

Depp: Manic eyes, axe?

As you would expect of a Tim Burton movie the film looks amazing, all big sets and epic spectacle, as with most films of recent times the CGI goes completely mad here and there but it is mostly put to good use, personally I thought the Squirrels were ace.

A lot of kids films now like to squeeze in knowing references to adult humour or other films to keep the parents happy. C&TCF keeps away from this trend (I was a bit disappointed they didn’t sneak at least one “Let’s go up the fudge tunnel” in) except for the TV sequence, which is a huge post-modern Kubrick/2001 homage that I lapped up like the sad movie geek I am.

The other incredibly post-modern element of the whole experience was the spoiled little brat sitting behind me, kicking the back of my seat and demanding ice-cream and pop-corn from her feckless mother. There’s never a crowd of homicidal squirrels and singing half-arses about when you really them is there?

Charlie and the hastily added links...

The official movie site

Publicity, games etc. you know the drill

Tales of the unexpected

Info on Roald Dahls darker stories from that TV programme with the mad music and the dancing naked woman in the titles