Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is on Netflix, which is an opportunity for critical reflection. Specifically, I want to talk about why the movie is so much worse than its classic predecessor, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). So let’s dissect both films and discuss the major differences that have led one film to stand the test of time while the other quickly fades into obscurity.
I. Good Egg
The classic status of the 1971 film, directed by Mel Stuart, is intriguing given the severity of its easily identifiable mistakes. Foremost among them is poor pacing: the movie is supposed to be about Charlie Bucket’s wondrous tour through the magical factory of his idol, chocolatier Willy Wonka, but it takes an excruciatingly long time to get to this stage. Rather than forge ahead to the main event, Stuart dwells tiresomely on the hardscrabble life of Charlie’s family—an especially strange emphasis given that his kin will soon disappear from the film completely, except for Grandpa Joe.
Another major blunder is portraying Charlie with no evident personality traits other than simple humility, resulting in a bland, unrelatable protagonist. In fact, the downgrading of Charlie’s role in the story—reflected in the altered title—so upset Roald Dahl, the writer of the source novel, that he disowned the movie.
Smaller errors by Stuart include thin, poorly acted portrayals of minor characters such as most of the parents, as well as odd aesthetic choices like displaying the Oompa-Loompas’ lyrics on screen and out of frame as if the movie were a kiddie sing-along.
So why, given these glaring problems, has Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory remained in the public consciousness after over fifty years? I think a few inspired elements deserve their dues, but none more than Gene Wilder’s smarmy portrayal of Willy Wonka.
Wilder’s Wonka is a truly unique character in American cinema. At times he demonstrates the idealism we expect from the great visionary earlier hailed by Grandpa Joe; for example, he sings about the great possibilities of “Pure Imagination”: “Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it.”
But more often, Wonka is cutting and cynical, especially when Charlie’s golden ticketmates are in danger. With Violet Beauregarde about to chew her infamous stick of gum, for instance, he warns her not to but then quickly gives up and appears to enjoy her blueberry-ification. With Mike Teavee about to zap himself into, appropriately, a television character, Wonka merely deadpans, “Don’t. Stop. Come back.” Only during Augustus Gloop’s demise does he become upset, and he makes clear that his vexation isn’t due to the departure of the daft Gloop but rather to the unacceptable touching of his precious chocolate by “human hands.”
The effect of these moments is to suggest that Wonka doesn’t particularly like children, which might seem like an unsavory trait, but I actually think it’s the very reason he’s so beloved as a character. The movie, more than anything, is about how terrible kids can be, and Wonka is the hero because he understands, more than any other character, just how terrible.
It’s not that he’s the only one with insight in this regard. Grandpa Joe, for one, calls Violet a “nitwit” for disobeying Wonka. But after Violet is taken away for “juicing,” Wonka goes much further than this, casually observing: “Two naughty, nasty little children gone. Three good, sweet little children left.” Naughty and nasty indeed—who could argue otherwise about Augustus and Violet, the first two to go? Wonka is harsh, but he’s right. And perhaps this film appeals particularly to children because they understand more than adults how right he is: they are the most unbiased evaluators of their peers. It’s the fawning adults who can’t see the monsters their kids have become. But Willy Wonka can, which makes him a hero to good kids.
And I haven’t even mentioned the most terrifying of Charlie’s rivals and the second best character in the movie: Veruca Salt. Played memorably by Julie Dawn Cole, Veruca explodes at the slightest disappointment or concern, like every horrible child. She’s so genuinely annoying that the other kids, accomplished brats themselves, immediately despise her: in one exchange, her insufferable whining is rejoined by Violet: “Stop squawking, you twit!” I’ll admit that Veruca’s heavy-handed “Bad Egg” demise is a little disappointing, but that may be in part because she’s such a formidable presence that we wish she’d stay around longer.
It’s a credit to Stuart’s judgment that Veruca is the only child character to get her own musical number; not even Charlie gets one. And there are subtle touches that add interest to an otherwise simple sequence. Keep an eye on Wonka during this song. He makes a point to refuse to look Veruca in the eye—ignoring her, the very response that would help her unlearn her narcissism, if only her parents could muster it. Appropriately, then, Wonka reserves a special ferocity for Mr. Salt, encouraging him, alone among the parents, to join his child’s fate. Again, I suspect that kids grasp the terror of a girl like Veruca and relate to Wonka’s recognition of it more than adults do.
I also suspect that they pick up on the consistency of the aesthetic of Wonka’s factory, which some reviewers inordinately criticized upon the movie’s release. Words like “shabby” and “cheap” were used to describe the set designs. But these criticisms are the remarks of professionals trained to examine parts of a film rather than the big picture. The fact that Wonka’s factory looks like an actual factory is no weakness; rather, it’s one of the film’s strongest elements. Sure, the sets appear limited by budget constraints—but Wonka is a businessman, isn’t he?
I refuse to believe that this goes over kids’ heads. Gene Siskel wrote that the chocolate river “looks too much like the Chicago River to be appealing.” But what kid knows what the Chicago River looks like? And among those who do, which of them can ascribe to it the unsanitary connotations that Siskel is invoking? Kids just want to be able to believe what they’re seeing.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has stuck around for a reason. It’s a kind of horror movie made for kids: a quasi-haunted house tale with villains that children can understand, because they encounter them every day: spoiled brats and their obsequious parents. And it’s all held together by the chocolatier who, long isolated from humanity, has lost the will and perhaps even the ability to apply the coddling, excuse-making filter through which we’re accustomed to seeing school-aged menaces.
II. Bad Egg
Now, on to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the newer film, which, as I indicated in my introduction, is far inferior to the old one. There’s no point in wasting time before naming its central, insurmountable weakness: Johnny Depp’s terrible performance as Willy Wonka.
The aim here appears to be, as with several later Burton-Depp collaborations, to achieve weirdness by any means necessary. Wonka in this film is a human Jack-in-the-Box, donning clownish grey makeup and grinning throughout in a severe, frozen manner. This doesn’t mean he’s always happy, though; actually, he’s petulant and insecure, often appearing wounded by the kids’ mean comments and reflecting on the sadness of his own childhood.
The effect is certainly weird, but weirdness for its own sake is worthless. Weirdness needs to gesture toward something, some recognizable quality or motive. This alien-like Wonka is totally foreign to the human experience, so he doesn’t warrant any emotional investment.
And worse still, the new direction of the character disarms the entire message of the story. Whereas Wilder’s Wonka, as I’ve noted, enjoys the ticketholders’ misfortunes out of relatable moral judgment, thereby inviting us to share in the enjoyment, Depp’s Wonka, on the other hand, enjoys their woes because he’s just as childish and bratty as they are, and he’s therefore in competition with them. This means that Charlie and Grandpa Joe are the only ones above the fray, the only relatable characters. But they don’t suffice, because they rarely speak during the tour. All that’s left is a group of painfully annoying people squabbling throughout the entire runtime.
Plus, Charlie isn’t really a viable moral authority, because he’s too young. At the finale, he’s tasked with educating the clueless Wonka about basic life truths, but this is disappointing, because it feels like a stretch. Charlie is a child; he shouldn’t be teaching the adults; that’s not how life works. Even in the novels of Dickens—the progenitor of Dahl’s aesthetic—children achieve virtuousness by listening to and heeding their wise mentors, advisers, older friends. They’re not tiny sages who correct their elders. Such a presentation rings immediately false.
As for the other children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there’s not much to say about them, because they’re barely in the film. And since Depp’s Wonka is already so childish, they add nothing anyway. Veruca Salt is a shadow of her former iteration. Violet becomes a ten foot high blueberry, perhaps as compensation for her diminished, one-note personality, which was already thin in the 1971 version, but not so thin as to preclude an applause-inducer like, “Stop squawking, you twit!”—which this Violet, with a monotone voice and eyes wide like a robot’s, could never muster.
The aspect of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was most widely praised upon release was the appearance of the factory, which many contrasted favorably with the more industrial look of the 1971 film. But again, this is dutiful professional evaluation detached from the larger vision of the film. The visuals of the new factory are certainly more colorful and elaborate, but they’re obviously computer generated and thus unconvincing as a place that anyone could enter and inhabit. And the CGI responsible for these visuals now looks dated and lame, as do, by extension, the reviewers who celebrated them in 2005.
For my part, I think the factory looks like something from a Dr. Seuss book. That’s not an insult. But as a kid, I wouldn’t exactly have been clamoring for a ticket to see the Lorax.
Plus, Wonka himself shows no imaginative talent at any point, so, in addition to the other visual issues, it’s impossible to believe that he was truly responsible for creating the factory shown on the screen. Instead of taking pride in the fruits of his “Pure Imagination,” as Wilder’s version does, this Wonka spends his time marveling at the creativity of his Oompa-Loompas (who, for a tribal people, have a suspicious affinity for the mid-2000’s pop sound). Who is really the brains of this factory?
You get the idea: one movie is good, the other is bad. There’s actually a third movie in the making now, starring Timothee Chalamet as a young Wonka in the midst of rising to prominence and building his factory. Maybe this time his dad will be a film critic, and as a show of rebellion, he’ll decide to appear in film after film after film, each one worse and more pointless than the last…
–Jim Andersen
For more movie commentary check out my panning of Forrest Gump.