Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Well, last night we finally got round to seeing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“. And loved it.

It sticks pretty closely to the book, the only real addition being that Willy Wonka now has a bit of a backstory showing why/how he became so interested in chocolate, and some of the motivations for it all. Which actually worked pretty well, it has to be said.

There are so many bits that stick in the mind, the squirrels are fantastic, the Oompa Loompa songs had me howling with the way they’re done (and how impressive is it that there’s only one guy playing all the Oompa Loompas?), the TV room referring to 2001:A space odyssey, the sheer beauty and accuracy of the portrayal of the Bucket household, and many others.

A couple of small points jarred, such as constantly referring to chocolate as candy, (the film seems to be set in the UK, but one assumes it needed a couple of points for american audiences to refer to) and the use of a ten-dollar bill for Charlie to buy the chocolate bar, which seemed like an odd piece of continuity error, but these are minor jars, nothing major.

Johnny Depp is fantastic as Wonka, with a role that must have been at least semi-influenced by Michael Jackson. I think that really Tim Burton was the only current director capable of making the entire thing seem as weird, dark and magical as it appeared – he has a vision that seems so in tune with Dahl’s original, always enjoying the multi-layered stories with a slight “adult” tinge while maintaining the child-friendly appeal of the main story.

But all the same, I do think the show-stealers were the squirrels and the Oompa-Loompas…