OK. Today, I headed out to my Imax again and saw the movie a second time. I had one purpose in doing this: a detailed review. My earlier review was rushed out, and I knew I really should have said more. So here goes. This review will be in a few parts, and I'll try to go as in-depth as I can. A warning: Spoilers may be ahead, so if you haven't seen the movie, either stick with me and bear with them or read it after you've seen the movie.
Part 1
If nothing else, the opening credit sequence of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" serves as an example of why I do not like Danny Elfman. His music is loud and invasive, and serves little purpose other than to annoy. His style varies little from film to film, with the same overpowered violins and massed choirs every time. However, this film will come to be his crown jewel, for reasons you'll learn later. Also, the opening credits feature some terrible computer animation that really could have been done better by going and shooting in a real chocolate factory, as was done for the 1971 film.
The picture opens on Charlie Bucket standing on a street corner. Charlie is played by little Freddie Highmore, who apparently was recommended by Johnny Depp as the best choice for the role. Well, I don't know what was going through Mr. Depp's head, because Freddie is by far not the best choice for the role. I have a young British friend called Will who could have played the role ten times better than Freddie did. His acting and line delivery is wooden, and he plays every scene as if it was the last. Peter Ostrum really put some energy into his incarnation of the role back in '71, and Freddie shows no such energy here. So, that's really too bad.
Charlie goes back to his own house, as apparently he had just got out of school. It is there that we meet his four grandparents and his mother. Mrs Bucket, portrayed by the wonderful Helena Bonham Carter, is the first in a long line of parents that completely and totally outshine their kids. She really puts some life into the role, and yet portrays Mrs Bucket completely different from Diana Soule in the original. And I must say, it's a welcome change, and is the first thing in the film to trump the original's version. Mr. Bucket, portrayed here by Noah Taylor, was cut out of the original, so Taylor was given free range to do whatever he wanted. He plays a stereotypical father, and pulls it off completely. I love this man now.
Unfortunately, Charlie's grandparents do not live up to this standard. I'll talk about Grandpa Joe later on, but for now, let's discuss the other three. Grandma Josephine is given quite a few lines here, but her role seems superficial, and I could have done without her lines. Grandma Georgina is moderately funny, occasionally dispensing lines that never failed to make most of the audience laugh, but I was only partially amused by her role. Grandpa George, however, is easily the best of the four grandparents. David Morris slips right into the role, and was the comic relief that Grandma Georgina could have been.
Back to the story: Mr Bucket presents his son with a few misshapen toothpaste caps to finish off a toothpaste-cap-and-yarn model of the Wonka factory. You see, he works at a toothpaste factory screwing toothpaste caps onto tubes. Every once in a while, he finds a "bad egg" and keeps it, and Charlie has built his huge factory model out of these "bad eggs". The model was inserted by screenwriter John August I believe, but I like it, as it sets up Charlie's obsession with Wonka.
Now after this, Mrs Bucket brings the cabbage soup dinner over to the bed where all four grandparents sleep, pulls up three chairs and they all begin to eat. Cabbage is all the Buckets can afford, as a job like Mr Bucket's doesn't pay much. This is when Grandpa Joe begins to tell tales of his tenure at the Wonka factory, and is the first time we actually see Wonka- at least from behind. Joe is played by David Kelly here, and this could well be the second-worst casting decision in the entire movie. Kelly has absolutely no energy when he's acting here. And I don't mean he acts like he's tired; he acts like he's on Ritalin. I can't help but think his character would have been better if Kelly had just gone and had a little Gatorade and a chocolate bar.
Anyway, the Joe stories are quite funny, specifically one involving building an Indian palace out of chocolate. Really, this part works. After that, Charlie heads up to his little bedroom, on the top "floor" of the house. This begs the question: If the grandparents have the huge bed, and Charlie takes the only visible set of stairs up to one room, where do the parents sleep? That really confuses me.
That night, motorcycles go out of the Wonka factory, armed with flyers to tack onto telephone poles that are intended to inform the world of the Golden Ticket contest. And sure enough, the next morning, there's a good forty people around one telephone pole, looking at the notice as we hear Willy Wonka read the flyer out. After school that day, in Charlie's house, Grandpa George can be heard to say, "This whole thing is a load of rubbish. Mark my words: the first boy to find one of those tickets will be fat, fat, fat!" Is he right? Find out in Part 2, due out tomorrow.
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