Movie Review:
'Charlie' Is No Match for 'Willie'

The thing about "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was that it was one of those movies that manage to be really memorable without actually being very impressive.

You all know what I mean; movies like "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and "Home Alone." "Willy Wonka" was the role that more or less permanently cast Gene Wilder as a slightly deranged candy magnate with a pronounced fear of people. I remember being in a film class in college where they showed "The Producers", and hearing someone in the audience say "Isn’t that Willy Wonka?" when Wilder, playing a completely different part, came on.

So the fact that someone had the nerve to remake "Willy Wonka" both startled and annoyed me. "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was the definitive version, the one that has percolated through popular culture, and it seemed to me that anyone thinking they could beat it put them at a serious disadvantage.

The odd thing about "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is that it’s really more about Wonka than it is about Charlie, in the same way that "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was more about Charlie than it was about Willy.

The first part of this movie is really pretty much the same as it was in the original: Charlie Bucket is an exceedingly poor boy with no special talents who gets lucky and finds one of Wonka’s Golden Tickets hidden inside a candy bar.

Charlie, accompanied by Grandpa Joe, goes to the factory as part of the first group of people to attend since it was locked up. The group includes four other ticket holders (all children) and their assorted relatives.

Up until this point, things have been pretty normal, but this comes to a jarring halt when the film arrives at what I’m going to call the Flaming Puppet Dance of Death. Apparently, Willy Wonka’s confectionary skills don’t carry over to songwriting or animatronics. Immediately following this is the arrival of Willy Wonka himself.

Gene Wilder’s take on Wonka was a slightly unnerved man who just didn’t seem comfortable unless he was talking about his work. Now we have Johnny Depp’s version of Wonka, who is downright bent and actually needs to reference flash cards just to talk with people about who he is.

The adventures inside the factory are similar in both the original and this remake, except that everything here is much more stylized and Willy Wonka keeps having flashbacks to his candy-deprived childhood. His father, it turns out, is a dentist.

The factory’s other inhabitants, the Oompa Loompas, are also here in this version, although they look much different and don’t sing the same way. Connoisseurs of bad movies will recognize the Oompa Loompas’ two-armed salute as being the same one used by the invading aliens in "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

This movie is roughly one part remake and two parts reshoot. The sheer amount of stuff that has gone in almost completely without change is surprising, although the material that was changed isn’t that bad. I spent the entirety of this movie waiting for it to make some disastrous slipup that totally betrayed its aims, and it never happened. It’s not as good as the original, but it’s not a train wreck – an accomplishment in and of itself.

Bonus points, then, for the Great Glass Elevator, the flag museum, and the puppet hospital and burn center. Kevin gives it three stars out of five.

© Kevin Paquet, 2005