Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? (non-tagged spoilers)

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Looks like I'm the first with a full review.

What you should (and probably already do) know about me: I'm a freak for the book. Read my copy until it literally fell apart. At the same time, I'm a freak for the old movie version. Seen that until I practically memorized it. Both hold a special place in my heart. I'm also a Burton/Elfman/Depp fan.

So how did I like this film? It was a letdown.

Ok, we'll start with the positives. It was beautiful. Colors, costumes, art direction, all very nice. Great set for Charlie's house. I was thrilled to see stuff from the book that wasn't in the old movie - Charlie's dad's job, for instance. At the same time there were some great new lines and angles on things.

The songs were great, lyrics straight out of the book. A lot of the music styles (and there were many) were a bit of a stretch for Elfman, but were definitely Elfman underneath. Loved that.

There were some wonderfully frightening moments - burning dolls, drowning in chocolate, attack squirrels, etc - and they had me giggling like mad. I love the idea of letting a kid's movie be scary. That stuff was awesome.

Depp's angle on Wonka - silly, childlike, socially inept - was fun. Most of the main players were great, most notably Charlie and his family, Augustus, Violet and her way creepy mom.

The effects were awesome.

Now for the not-so-good.

I just checked who wrote the screenplay and turns out it's the same guy that wrote Big Fish. Well big friggin' surprise. The added bit with Wonka dealing with his evil dentist father were fun for a while but the ruined ending, with its reconciliation between father and son, was totally giving me Big Fish flashbacks (I didn't like that one either). Why oh WHY did Wonka need a story arc? Didn't they think the book was good on it's own? I admit, again, that Wonka being a child unable to eat candy was great, but the ending was a total disaster.

Plus, Wonka's backstory took the focus of of Charlie, which Greg pointed out to me as the big irony - the old movie was called "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" yet was actully about Charlie, and this one had it the other way around. I kept thinking that if they hadn't included all of Wonka's flashbacks they could have had more about the kids. We saw nearly nothing from Mike Teevee and I was intrigued about his character.

Speaking of Mike - the character was taken in a whole new direction, which at the outset, seemed like a really cool concept. Instead of a braindead TV watcher that lives in a TV world, Mike was a modern generation gamer - tech smart. Not stupid, but a smart ass that thinks he's all grown up. I loved his introduction, with his bewildered parents. But yet when the Oompa Loompas sing his song they keep the old book lyrics about TV "killing imagination dead....he cannot think, he only sees" which don't make sense anymore. I would have forgiven them for changing lyrics to fit the character. Like I said, I'm bummed we didn't see more from him.

During the sequences where children were in trouble, there was hardly any reaction from the other people. No screaming, no fright even. Sometimes even the kids themselves didn't look frightened at all. The peak of this oddness is when Veruca is attacked by squirrels. The images are incredibly frightening, straight out of a horror movie, but she barely makes a sound. I think at one point, after battling squirrels for ages, she simply says, "Daddy, I don't like this!" Anyone, child or adult, facing 100 squirrels jumping on them would be shrieking and fighting like crazy. And everyone else watching doesn't even twitch, especially her dad, who barely makes an attempt to get through the gate to save her. Veruca was terrible in general, but this "style" was throughout the movie, where the characters just absorb whatever's thrown at them, and only sometimes do they make the wonderful quips from the book. (In the old movie they added a lot of fun quips as well, which made their reactions better). I guess I have to blame Burton for this odd direction.

All in all I had a good time at the movie but as a fan of all the stuff I mentioned above, this was a letdown. There was no earthly reason to add in Wonka's backstory. No reason at all. It gave the movie a second moral that, by using it as the climax, eclipses the old moral. This wasn't Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this was Willy Wonka Learns His Lesson.

It's such a shame.