Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Directed by Tim Burton
A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world's most unusual candy maker.
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What critics say influenced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Depp’s performance aside, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pure magic, swimming as it is in a black-treacle riptide of astonishing Oompa Loompa production numbers, an eerie patina of CGI airbrushing (Wonka himself looks downright pasteurized), and some almost too clever in-jokes, and at least two references to Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film The Fly.
With a pageboy haircut, pale skin and a voice that recalls Dustin Hoffman as "Tootsie", Mr. Depp's Wonka exudes none of the gravity required for the role.
Tim Burton's ("Edward Scissorhands"/"Big Fish"/"Sleepy Hollow") lavish looking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a sure-fire treat for the eyes, and somewhat less so for the taste buds.
Instead, director Tim Burton - himself a master of slightly creepy, otherworldly whimsy a la "Big Fish" and "Sleepy Hollow" - manages to improve on the first picture in several ways.
It's hard to imagine a more fitting interpreter of Roald Dahl, particularly his beloved "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," than director Tim Burton ("Big Fish," "Sleepy Hollow," "Edward Scissorhands").
After the triumph of Big Fish, Burton decided to film a new adaptation of the late Roald Dahls beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one in which Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and 1999s Sleepy Hollow) would play reclusive candy maker Willy Wonka.
Although Burton and Depp have made three movies together so far– Edward Scissorhands Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow —Burton admits Charlie & the Chocolate Factory was the first time he didn’t have to beg the studio execs to let him cast the inscrutable actor.
His antiheroes (in such films as "Edward Scissorhands," "Beetle Juice," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Mars Attacks!" and "Sleepy Hollow") are frequently cold, tortured or barely human, and their family or social relationships aren't much better.
Keaton and Basinger's careers subsequently imploded (not even an unlikely Oscar win could save young Kim), while Tim Burton partially redeemed himself with Batman Returns but then disgraced himself with his lacklustre reappraisal of the Planet Of The Apes franchise - he's since clawed ground back with the okay Big Fish and the excellent Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
Burton’s penchant for production design over traditional narrative, what, in another context, might be called “gigantism,” was already evident in his first foray into big-budget filmmaking, the neo-baroque Batman and the sequel, Batman Returns.
Batman was his kingmaker film and if anything could torpedo his career, it would have been his woeful Planet of the Apes.
For one thing, Mr. Burton has shown a fabulous visual imagination in his best movies, such as "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and the first two "Batman" pictures.
Tim Burton, who’s never had a problem toying with other people’s creations (Batman and Planet of the Apes) remakes Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with a big budget and his characteristically quirky touch.
The opening credits, for instance, are in a style that can only be called typical Burton, while the workings of the chocolate factory beneath those credits evoke the Inventor's cookie machine in Edward Scissorhands.
Although this movie is an adaptation of one of Dahl's best loved stories, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory feels like Burton through-and-through - from the bits and pieces cut from Edward Scissorhands to an ending that hearkens back to the theme of father/son affection from Big Fish.
Tim Burton's ("Edward Scissorhands"/"Big Fish"/"Sleepy Hollow") lavish looking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a sure-fire treat for the eyes, and somewhat less so for the taste buds.
The first hour is so obsessively faithful to the Roald Dahl source material that I was lulled into believing that Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was going to be a classic, a magnificent return to form for the dark fantasist who, once upon a time, denied Edward Scissorhands a happy ending, and let the Headless Horseman come back for the little kid under the floorboards.
Burton, who began his weird and wacky film career with Pee Wee's Big Adventure and who created the dark and poignant fable, Edward Scissorhands, seemed a natural to tackle Dahl's dark, satirical material.
Burton's take is far more sober and solemn by comparison, featuring only four brief tunes (all of them performed by Deep Roy, who has been computer-cloned into a small army of hard-working Oompa Loompas) and an elegantly eerie/cheery atmosphere that's very much in line with Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" and "Big Fish."
In films like Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes, (the official nadir of his career), he struggled to balance his vision with the demands of blockbuster moviemaking, with the latter side often winning out.
It�s also a grab-bag of Burton-isms, as he seems to be referencing almost everything from his resume, from the gleeful menace of Mars Attacks! and Beetlejuice to the childlike antics of Pee-Wee�s Big Adventure; from the unpredictable visual set pieces and sight gags of Big Fish to the representation of Wonka as a misunderstood misfit, a la Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Jack Skellington.
His antiheroes (in such films as "Edward Scissorhands," "Beetle Juice," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Mars Attacks!" and "Sleepy Hollow") are frequently cold, tortured or barely human, and their family or social relationships aren't much better.
It�s also a grab-bag of Burton-isms, as he seems to be referencing almost everything from his resume, from the gleeful menace of Mars Attacks! and Beetlejuice to the childlike antics of Pee-Wee�s Big Adventure; from the unpredictable visual set pieces and sight gags of Big Fish to the representation of Wonka as a misunderstood misfit, a la Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Jack Skellington.
Tim Burton, the man-child behind “Beetlejuice” and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” couldn’t be any more at home with Mr. Dahl’s text.
He is strong with his own material: Edward Scissorhands , Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas.
This director constantly veers from mopiness to flamboyant glee, though Charlie is closer in tone to his Beetlejuice than to his Edward Scissorhands.
I mean, come on: the director of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands taking on the cooky, candy-colored, funhouse Road Dahl novel, with no less than Johnny Depp — master of the gloriously eccentric in front of the camera — reprising the Gene Wilder role from the 1971 classic?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory easily rivals “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands” as his best work.
Burton’s penchant for production design over traditional narrative, what, in another context, might be called “gigantism,” was already evident in his first foray into big-budget filmmaking, the neo-baroque Batman and the sequel, Batman Returns.
The director, whose résumé includes "Ed Wood" and "Edward Scissorhands" and whose creepy PG-13 "Batman Returns" left parents pleading for mercy, seemed the ideal match for a writer whom one critic described as having "a taste for cruelty, rudeness to adults and the comic grotesque."
Tim Burton, the man-child behind “Beetlejuice” and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” couldn’t be any more at home with Mr. Dahl’s text.
For one thing, Mr. Burton has shown a fabulous visual imagination in his best movies, such as "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and the first two "Batman" pictures.
He's also had experience in telling a story about a child-like man who dresses in a funny way and relates to children: "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" was his directorial debut 20 years ago.
That said, I can only hope that the relatively naturalistic feel of "Big Fish" doesnt mean that Tim Burton is going to abandon fantasy altogether (and the fact that his next film is supposed to be an adaptation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is a good sign).
Burton’s adaptation also signals the decline of a talented visual stylist that began with the remake of "Planet of the Apes" and accelerated with "Big Fish" (the forthcoming "Corpse Bride" may, hopefully, challenge that assertion).
His last two films, Big Fish and Planet of the Apes, lurched in and out of formula, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has been faithfully adapted from Roald Dahl's great 1964 children's novel, is a delectably sustained flight of fancy.
Burton and screenwriter John August (who penned the director's last film, Big Fish) restore several elements that were deleted or changed in the earlier movie, including a Nut Room staffed by hyper-efficient squirrels and Wonka's trip to Loompaland to recruit the Oompa-Loompas that work in his factory.
Instead, director Tim Burton - himself a master of slightly creepy, otherworldly whimsy a la "Big Fish" and "Sleepy Hollow" - manages to improve on the first picture in several ways.
But until Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they hadn't been trite or, perish the thought, fearful.
The set design of little Charlie's hovel on the edge of an industrial town is stunning--a throwback to the German Expressionism of Burton's Vincent and, in its canted walls, the best of its kind since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Other wonders include the great Christopher Lee, who appears as Wonka Sr., the screen’s second most distressing dentist (after Laurence Olivier’s Christian Szell in Marathon Man), and Phillipe Rousselot’s pristine cinematography, which wraps the whole production up in a manic, stylized glow.
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In terms of how it works, it's not unlike Little Shop of Horrors, the musical comedy about murder, mayhem, and a giant Venus Fly Trap.
I remember several years ago when Tim Burton remade this film as the originally titled “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” some people were irate.
A box office disappointment in its own time, this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has come to be regarded as a children’s classic someone in the same league - if not quite on the same level - with THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Children's writer Roald Dahl ("James and the Giant Peach," "The Witches") adapted the 1971 screenplay from his own book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and Mel Stuart ("If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," "One Is a Lonely Number") directed the film.
The original Roald Dahl novel is called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , but this film recognizes that although Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) is the protagonist, and is as decent and spunky as Dickens’ archetypal poor young hero Nicholas Nickleby, the story’s center of gravity is the "Candy Man" and his wonky world.
Children’s writer Roald Dahl (“James and the Giant Peach,” “The Witches”) adapted the screenplay from his own book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
It’s also brimming with invention – there are tonnes of fabulous sight gags and Burton makes terrific use of both Kubrick's 2001 and Hitchcock's Psycho during the Mike Teavee sequence.
The brains behind such classics as "James and the Giant Peach", “The Witches”, "The Man from the South" (which was spoofed by Tarantino in his segment of "Four Rooms") and the unforgettable first episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" ("Lamb to the Slaughter"), Dahl made a name for himself with his playful intelligence, and decidedly twisted sense of humor.
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A film hasn't been this unnecessary since Gus Van Sant dropped one too many tabs of acid and decided to create a shot-for-shot remake of the original Psycho.
Why not take another stab at "The Wizard of Oz" or "Gone With the Wind" or "Citizen Kane"?