A visual feast

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2005)

(watched in Richmond, B.C.)
Those who have seen "Willy Wonker's Chocolate Factory" will likely remember the hauntingly creepy tune that the Oompa Loompas chant repeatedly as the bad kids got their undoubtedly well-deserved punishments. No argument that this is after all a simple children's story but there are certain things, maybe just abstract feeling, that suggest a dark side.
The updated version (kid hooked on video games instead of TV, for example) replaces the name Willy Wonker with Charlie and in the process, as suggested by some critics, rightly changes the emphasis from the mysterious, or perhaps even sinister Willy Wonker, to the true focus of the story, poor and family loving Charlie. These critics then also suggest that while overall, the chocolate factory has been made to look and feel less ominous, the character of Willy Wonker has been deliberately designed to remind you of one Michael Jackson. Bringing the five kids into the factory would then take on another dimension, even if only subliminally. You be the judge.
The simple story line remains unchanged. Five lucky kids find in their Wonker chocolate bar golden tickets for a tour in Willie Wonker's Chocolate Factory which was closed to all visitors suddenly overnight some years ago. Charlie is the hero while the other four kids are living specimens of how rotten a kid can be brought up to be, thanks to their misguided and misguiding parents. In the end the bad kids get what they deserve, and so does Charlie.
For the same old story in the hands of Tim Burton, with today's technology, you would have certain expectations. Those expectations I would say are generally met. This very story gives Burton the best ever opportunity to indulge in his passion for colours and shapes, as the factory provides perfect legitimacy for the most extravagant and outrageous visual scheme he has in mind. If you remember, some of his play with colour and shape looks somewhat unnatural in "Edward Cissorhand". But inside the chocolate factory, you won't even dream for a second of questioning the validity of any visual display you see, however strange it may look. Come to think of it, it is almost as if the chocolate factory story is written for the very purpose of a Tim Burton film.
For casting, Burton brings together again Johnny Depp (as Willy), his favourite lead, and Freddie Highmore (as Charlie) who played so well against Depp in Finding Neverland. And, as in many of his movies, Burton has a role for his fiancée Helena Bonham Carter, this time as Charlie's mother. We also have Christopher Lee playing a just-a-little-more-than-cameo role of Willy's father.
The movie is first and foremost a visual feast. One great moment for me is hearing a suggestive hint of Richard Strauss "Also sprach Zarathustra" and then finding indeed the familiar scene from Stanley Subrick's "Space Odyssey: 2001", but with a Wonker chocolate bar impersonating the mysterious slab!