Burton is a Wuss!

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2005)

The first thing I thought when the end credits rolled up was "Tim Burton, you rotten, rotten man! You've been going on for weeks in the papers about how much better your film will be because it is truer to the book and about how you haven't even bothered to watch the previous film anyhow (so how would you know yours is truer to the book?) and how Roald Dahl hated the previous film because it focused too much on Wonka and not enough on Charlie. But your film goes miles further with this!" The only real departure that the first film makes from the basic story of the book is Charlie and Grandpa Joe's misdemeanour with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks which ends up having quite serious repercussions towards the end of the story but which I think manages to deepen it in a way. Burton has completely missed the mark on Wonka. His issue is not warped childhood/estranged father, nor should this have any bearing on his eccentricity. Willy Wonka simply does not trust people. And rightly so. Many of them are out to steal his secrets. But he realises he is getting older and he needs to find someone he can trust in order to pass on his magical legacy. The fact that the first film makes more of this is a good thing and also that both Charlie and Wonka both have to get beyond their human imperfections (and the other delicious thing about this film is that we find out Wilder's Wonka is human after all, we finally see past the facade) in order to form a relationship with one another. Depp's Wonka and Highmore's Charlie never earn this relationship. He is simply the last one left and Depp greets him manically with "Oh you're the last one left! You're the winner!" Later he says to his parents "He won cause he was the least rotten of them all." It's like he never sees who Charlie is and I think this is the result of a directorial decision which makes the main action of the movie all about Depp. It is as if all the other actors are there to hold up Depp while he minces about in all his velvet coated eccentricity. That's not to say his performance doesn't have its charm and wonderful moments of comic timing. But he never seems to listen or absorb which seems odd for a character who is sitting in judgement on this group of people. Everything seems to be drawn in towards him. He is even given a trite back story which is so from the mischief and wicked glee of Dahl that I couldn't believe how Burton could kid himself that this was true to the book, either its plot or tone, or that his film was more about Charlie than Wonka. It can be argued that the first film misses Dahl's superb sense of the Macabre. But even though Tim Burton is a master of the Macabre in his own way, imposing his style onto Dahl's story doesn't quite work, even though he has a perfect right to do it, artistic freedom and all that, and it can be fun to watch. It works somewhat with the evil children, particularly in the preternatural quality of their skin and the clever camera angles used to enhance their demonic expressions. Even their characterisations worked quite well and were well updated, especially in the case of Mike Teevee. The squirrels and oompa loompas were far more ominous in the book because they were given the time. In the end he completely misses the spirit of the book. Dahl had a kind of sadistic patience with the children's demises whereas in this film we were rushed through them so there would be screen time for the overtly moral message at the end which Dahl would probably cringe at, at least one as sentimental as what is on offer at the end of this. Anyway the book HAS a moral message. If you are a nasty greedy little child you will come to a sticky end. Simple and no-nonsense! The book also suggests a possibility that there can be cases where a person will be judged on their own internal character rather than on their status in life. A theme which I think Burtons film does touch upon, I really liked the opening line which said something about although Charlie rarely had enough to eat he was the luckiest boy in the world. The opening of Wonkas factory with the warped puppets going on fire was interesting and creepy, but it was Tim Burton creepy and we've seen it all before, toys with their eyes popping out and so on...Gothic splendour and tired kookiness. Harking back to the fizzy lifting drinks episode from the first film where Charlie and his Grandpa have to burp themselves back to safety, I love that scene, even if it is not in the book and even if the writer himself may not have approved, because it captures all the possibility, the underlying danger and the absurdity of the story. Roald Dahl is all about the Macabre in the ordinariness of life. His more vile characters are shocking because they are based in reality, albeit twisted and stretched by means of his joyfully malicious imagination. He revels in belching and picking your nose and eating worms thinking they are spaghetti and gluing your fathers hat to his head. And like Wonkas factory he takes these possibilities, frees them from logic and turns them into wonderful feats of the imagination. But let me just say for the record I was rather enjoying the film until the end when Tim Burton wussed out and made the story go where no story should ever go. Where big fat Hollywood execs say it should.