Pointless Candy

Rating: 4/10 (9 January 2020)

An exchange between Charlie Oliver Twist and the TV kid here sums up TIm Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" quite well. Riding in the glass elevator through fireworks, Teavee asks sarcastically, "Why is everything here completely pointless?" To which the cloying simpleton Charlie circularly states, "Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy." Stupid telly child, why one might as well inquire as to the point of any Tim Burton movie.
Based on the same book, the 1971 "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" worked on a couple levels. It was something of a parody of itself in its making fun of the culture surrounding television and candy. Much of the first forty-or-so minutes were devoted to this--even before Willy Wonka was introduced. Such humorous self-deprecation is largely dispensed with here in favor of zany looks, pratfalls and straightforwardly-debasing caricatures. The latter includes restoring some of the book's imperialist attitudes, what with the Indian prince stereotype and furthering the connotations to the history of African slavery with the Oompa Loompas (originally, Roald Dahl wrote them as African Pygmies) being discovered by Wonka in the jungle. And make what you will of this racial other all being made to look alike here.
The 1971 film also benefited, despite the name change in the title, from generally sticking with the perspective of Charlie. What we saw in the film, then, was the world as a child might perceive it. One where candy is currency, adults are nonsensical and capricious, contrivances seem magical and factories are amusement parks. In this 2005 movie, however, we also get Wonka's backstory, as remembered by him and as told by Charlie's grandfather, as well as too many other perspectives, which is ultimately cleaned up by the introduction of a narrator. The result is even more saccharine, too. But, the real problem is that the child's perspective is lost; in its place, we get what we always get in Burton's oeuvre: his perspective--unaccountably skewed and made-up to look goth. Oh, plus, there's the CGI, which merely makes the candy look like a cartoon.
Yet, I'll gladly rewatch this any day over what Burton did to Lewis Carroll's Alice books. They don't stray far from the source this time. Johnny Depp is at least slightly amusing as Willy Wonka, as opposed to his insufferable turn as the Mad Hatter. Casting Dracula himself, Christopher Lee, as a dentist is fangtastic. There are a few good verbal puns, too. And the candy-as-TV sequence is reimagined relatively well here compared to the 1971 iteration, including referencing "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "Psycho" (1960) and pop-music bands. Indeed, there are quite a few references to other media sprinkled throughout--some being other Burton films or the usual gothic and horror-related pictures he likes to imitate. We first see Depp here reprising a pose from "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), for instance, whereas one unfortunate Oompa is transformed into Cousin It from "The Addams Family." But, yeah, mostly it's just completely pointless.