Outsourcing makes sense

Rating: 8/10 (11 June 2013)

Some reviewers said "This film is just wrong and horrible" and another "Garbage. Absolute, pure, filthy garbage."
They expected a children's movie full of innocence and instead received a horror movie.
This 2005 version reminded me of the cruelty of the child-snatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But it's emphasis is educational. It obfuscates the industrial reality we all live in for the benefit of children. Among it's sweet candies are examples of redundancy in the work place, the loss of patent protection, the outsourcing of jobs, the issue of waste disposal and several other contemporary industrial related themes. The adults in the audience will identify most of them.
In addition it tells us a little about the modern consumer. It tells us that the rich kids get everything they want and the poor kids feed upon hopes and dreams. The Golden Ticket is the Lottery Ticket, the town and factory are set in a late Victorian landscape and Willy Wonka himself has to fall in love with himself because nobody else will.
The film is a very good attempt at merging many of the issues we face today in our society. It's not very good at being a children's movie since the special effects are rather tame compared with it's competitors.
My personal favourite scene in the movie is the where the mechanical marionettes are used to welcome the the guests. They fail and spit fire from faulty wiring. That scene is an attempt to say "Goodbye" to the earlier Wonka film of the 70's and usher in a new, far more brutal reality.
My own criticism is that some later components in the movie tend to mirror elements in the end of the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy movie.
Note: It would have been interesting to have made the movie more sinister by casting Peter Cushing as Willy Wonka rather than as his father. Even better, Vincent Price, RIP.