Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How are you all doing today? I'm doing quite well for the end of the week. Today I'm here to review the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was adapted from Roald Dahl's 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and stars Gene Wilder as the titular character, Willy Wonka. As always there will be some spoilers in this review so I can talk about things without worrying about it. So let's get right into it shall we?
Last night was the first time in about thirty years that I'd seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. That's due to the fact that we never owned the movie. My parents rented it for me from Rogers Video a few times, but we never owned it despite all of the home video releases it's had over the years. I'll get into that a little later. Despite having not seen it in such a long time I actually remembered quite a bit about the movie. Certain scenes popped up that I remembered from having seen the movie as a kid. Despite not having the ability to watch it since the last time we rented it.
The most fascinating part of the movie for me, and of the original Roald Dahl novel, is actually Willy Wonka himself. I mean his plan to bring kids to the factory is pretty elaborate and almost conniving in a way given he actually sends someone out to pose as his competitor, Slugworth, to approach each winner with an "offer" for them to steal the Everlasting Gobstopper in exchange for a large sum of money if they're successful. And even that detail isn't revealed until the very end of the movie once Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teevee are out of the picture. It's just assumed by Charlie and Grandpa Joe, as well as the audience, that it was actually Slugworth who approached them.
Also, I think Gene Wilder does a magnificent job at a portrayal of Willy Wonka that is actually quite faithful to the novel. He's a mix of dark, tragic, cheerful, and sarcastic, which is exactly how I remember the character from the book being. Honestly the entire cast is pretty accurate to the characters in the book. One of my favourite things about this version of the character is how every time one of the children goes to do the stupid thing that ends their tour of the factory he only half-heartedly tries to stop them from doing it as if he doesn't want them to be there as he's already deemed them unworthy to inherit the chocolate factory. Which is why Charlie and Grandpa Joe don't get ejected from the tour when they take a sip of the Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
Charlie Bucket is pretty bland in the movie, but he's also bland in the novel. At least compared to the other characters, including Grandpa Joe. That's mainly because Charlie is basically the straight man in the film, while everyone else, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George, and Grandma Georgina and his mother aside, are so over the top and wacky that Charlie seems uninteresting as a result. Which is oddly fascinating given how child characters are often portrayed as in movies like this as shown by the other child characters in this movie.
Obviously the Oompa-Loompas are the most memorable part of this movie for me. Probably because they're used fairly sparingly and their song, "Oompa-Loompa" is actually pretty haunting. It's a really catchy song, but very very haunting. Especially since they sing it after one of the children does something stupid almost as a warning to the other children.
The Slugworth storyline doesn't really work for me. The character was simply mentioned in the novel and the movie doesn't actually do anything with him since he's not actually Slugworth, but one of Wonka's people pretending to be Slugworth. So that just makes the storyline pointless and out of sync with the rest of the movie.
As I mentioned earlier, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was based on the 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory written by Roald Dahl, a famous children's author who also wrote The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and the sequel to this novel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator among many others. I read this novel alot as a kid. We had a copy of it on our shelves for years. My mom even still has that copy though I bought myself a newer paperback edition. I've always enjoyed the book though I hadn't read it in years until I got my own copy in late 2019.
The movie was released on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray several times over the years. I'm pretty sure the VHS copy we rented was the 1986 edition as this is the cover I remember seeing at the video store and we actually only rented it prior to our move out into the country in 1993. But since it was re-released on VHS in 1991, chances are that was the one we rented rather than the 1986 one. I'm hoping to put the VHS in my collection in the near future hopefully.
Overall this was a fun movie to revisit after thirty years. As a musical it feels like a remnant from the classic musicals of the 1930s and 1940s, upbeat and positive. It's also pretty good as an adaptation, with most people preferring it over the Tim Burton version from 2005. If you've never seen this movie before, I highly recommend it.
And that's it for me for this week. I'll be back on Monday for my next Doctor Who review. I'll also have issues 13-18 of The Amazing Spider-Girl for you on Wednesday as well as a review of the 1986 Disney Sci-Fi film, Flight of the Navigator for you on Saturday. However, I'm going to do two additional reviews on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Sunday I'm going to review the Star Trek episode "Space Seed", on Tuesday I'm going to review Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Thursday I'll be reviewing the first episode of Marvel's What If...? which drops on Wednesday morning. Then on Friday I'll have a review of the season premiere of season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks which airs on Thursday night. So stayed tuned for all of that coming your way here at the Review Basement. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment