A film with all the Chocolatey goodness, but no sticky, sickly sweetness

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2006)

Having looked through a number of websites and read lots of reviews on this film, I decided that the time had come for me to submit my own viewpoint. I can hardly start to sum up this film, but I shall give it my best shot: WOW! I found that many bad reviews come from the fact that it is being compared to the so called "original", as if this is a remake of the Gene Wilder version in the seventies. That's the wrong way of looking at it; it is simply a different interpretation of the same story. I have been reading Roald Dahl since I was five years old, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was only the third book I ever read to myself, and one of my favourite things about his books is the dark, perverted, somewhat macabre sense of humour he has. His books are not "pleasant", not "sweet", not always for little kids. And yet a review I discovered just the other day rebuked the 2005 version for being too "dark", and the songs "not having the same pleasant tune". My dear friends, we forget that these are the lyrics that Roald Dahl himself wrote in the original books, and also we must remember that this is Roald Dahl we are talking about. Darkness and dark humour was the key to his books.
I always found the original too "twee" for the story they were interpreting, and it always bugged me that the Bucket family in the original were Americans, whereas Roald Dahl himself was very British. I have never come to terms with an American Bucket family, not that I have anything against Americans.
I think Johnny Depp is fantastic as Willy Wonka. He takes the character Gene Wilder portrayed and gives it a twist in the right direction. No more niceness, just creepy, dark humour, and I love that. It's straight out of a Roald Dahl novel, just as it should be. Freddie Highmore; well you gotta love Freddie. He is an amazing actor, he brings an averageness to Charlie Bucket, a sense that he is just a poor, normally, kindhearted boy like any other in the world, which really makes him believable. And the rest of the supporting cast were also fantastic, especially David Kelly as Grandpa Joe...and how can we forget Liz Smith as the dippy Grandma Georgina??
*Takes off hat in appreciation*
I really have hated the reviews where people have said "the effects are not very realistic" and someone said "too much blue screen so that the actors aren't as amazed as they should be", or words to that effect. From the programmes I have seen, I know that the whole of the chocolate room, the inventing room, the TV room, and all the other rooms that were visited were built especially for the film. That is why the effects do not look CGI at all, something that some people have interpreted as it being really bad effects. No people, it's just real life set, thats why it doesn't look computer animated. And I think the fact that the horrible children don't look at all bored is a product of great acting; if I had been there I wouldn't have been able to stop looking around and going "woah, this is so huge!". The kid actors really must have tried really hard to look as bored and as horrible as their nasty little characters must have been.
The background given to Willy Wonka **SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER** seems to be straight out of a Roald Dahl novel, and I applaud whoever thought up the idea. Tim Burton has that same dark bubbliness that Roald Dahl had in writing, and it really brings it to life. The idea that Willy Wonka's father was a dentist who hated chocolate, and Willy himself a kid with the misfortune of having a huge brace on his head is just...such an imaginative background for such an extraordinary character. And the ending reunion with his father, and the subsequent acceptance of the Bucket family into his factory, is the only really sweet bit in the movie, but not so sweet that it leaves a sickly aftertaste in your mouth.
All in all, a much more satisfying interpretation of a much loved story; NOT a remake of the 1971 version. I would recommend it to anyone because I LOVED IT! 10 stars out of 10, most definitely.
Yours...Phantom Phan (^)_ ^