🦋 A lousy movie
We watched Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Friday night and it left me flat. Now "it left me flat" is certainly not a recommendation; but it took until last night, when I was talking about the movie with Mark, for me to realize how much I actively disliked the movie. I had been too distracted by the pretty colors and animation, and the fabulous acting of two of the leads, to really get how lame it was. Let's think about three things: the book; the old Wilder movie; and the new movie. These are three quite distinct things with not all that much really in common, besides the skeleton of the plot and some similarities in characterization. The book is masterful. The Wilder movie is fun and superficial. The Burton movie stinks. Both the Wilder movie and the Burton movie have one major deviation from the book's plot plus many little ones. The Wilder movie has the part with Charlie and his Grandpa drinking the soda that makes you float, and Mr. Wonka getting mad at them for it; made up from whole cloth, nothing like it in the book; and whatever -- it's kind of funny though it does not really add much to the story. (Well actually I really like Grandpa Joe's speech after Wonka gets mad. But as I said whatever.) You can fit it in reasonably with the characters as they're presented. The Burton movie deviates hugely from the plot of the book at the end of the movie; I am not going to go into detail about how because that would be a spoiler, but it's about the lamest ending I can imagine. Seriously -- I was relating it to Mark last night (who is not planning to see the movie) -- and with each clause of my summary he was gasping with incredulity at the total cheesiness/kitschiness of it. And also, there is the little matter of Johnny Depp's performance -- it seemed to me like he was in a totally separate movie from the rest of the actors. And this is not at all true to the book -- Wonka is eccentric, but he is extremely connected to what is going on around him. So there you have it -- a pan from Jeremy, who is usually quite easy to please when it comes to movies. Update: A similar reaction to the new movie from Timothy Burke, who expresses himself better than I.
posted evening of Wednesday, July 27th, 2005
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