Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore)
I can remember watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when I was in elementary school. From my seat on the gymnasium floor, I marveled at the fantastical world depicted inside the fabled candy factory; the film genuinely sparked my imagination with its colourful sets and the mischievous performance by Gene Wilder. Many years have passed since then, and my memory of its merit is fuzzy at best, so it was with impartial expectations that I approached Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the new movie based on Roald Dahl’s heralded children’s story (but this time, it’s correctly titled!).
Freddie Highmore plays the wide-eyed Charlie Bucket, an aw-shucks kind of kid who loves his understanding mom (Helena Bonham Carter), his unemployed dad (Noah Taylor) and his two sets of grandparents with all his heart. Despite being poor beyond the capability of actually living, the Buckets splurge on a candy bar for Charlie so that he can get a chance to win a contest where the grand prize is a tour of recluse Willy Wonka’s mysterious candymaking factory. When Charlie doesn’t win, his Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) gives Charlie his last bit of money to buy a candy bar. Bummer: strike two. Finally, Charlie finds someone else’s money on the sidewalk, uses it to buy a bar, and wins the elusive final ticket.
What kind of warped moral is to be found here, anyway? The near-pathetic glorification of gambling in the face of devastating poverty couldn’t be more obvious, and it is almost as if Charlie is being rewarded for keeping the found money instead of doing the right thing and turning it in. And yet, despite these missteps, the first third of the movie has a special kind of “sweetness” all its own. The love that the Buckets have for each other is palpable, and we root for them in spite of the questionable themes at play.
Of course, it is at this point that Willie Wonka appears, in the form of Johnny Depp. As promised in the contest, Wonka conducts a tour for Charlie and Grandpa Joe, as well as four other kids, who are supposed to represent the antithesis of Charlie and therefore be made to suffer for their spoiled, arrogant, or gluttonous ways. Everyone recognizes the dreaded Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) and Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) as soon as their names are uttered, so when their dark come-uppances transpire, we don’t feel too bad, yet we don’t entirely sit comfortably in our seats either.
Naturally, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is directed by Tim Burton, who is completely at home with the subject matter. Oddly enough, it is his depiction of the urban workaday world outside of the factory that offers the most impressive art direction, and once we are inside the chocolate factory, it doesn’t really have the same impact as anticipated.
One bright side, however, lies in the songs and dance routines of the Oompa Loompas (Deep Roy). Purists will appreciate that the lyrics are taken directly from Dahl’s source material and have been jazzed up via arrangements by composer Danny Elfman. Through so-so CGI effects, the pint-sized characters populate the factory and almost manage to upstage Depp whenever they kick into action with their ambiguous morality tunes.
Kids may find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory too dark in places, while adults are likely to appreciate some of the edgy humour but grow weary of the uneven pacing, pretty much leaving this a project without a real target audience. It’s a fun, frivolous piece of summer fluff, but about as filling as the junk food we see onscreen. Perhaps what really causes the film to miss the mark is that it reveals how conflicted – or absent -- Dahl’s intended lesson of the story is, and that sometimes, as demonstrated with Wonka in the film, a children’s story without a moral compass is bound to lose its way no matter how much money, cheap distractions, or phony good intentions you try to pump into it.
