Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

When you hear about Roald Dahl’s famous 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, chances are that you will instead think of one of its many adaptations, most likely either the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Willy Wonka) directed by Mel Stuart or the 2005 film directed by Tim Burton that was named after the book (Charlie), if not the more recent 2019 film Wonka that serves as a prequel to the 1971 film. As someone who grew up with Willy Wonka and had read the book maybe once at some point, I was curious about the 2005 film and saw it in a theater when it first came out, only to generally dislike it in favor of the original adaptation. Following a theatrical screening of Wonka that was followed by another rewatch of Willy Wonka, I more seriously considered giving Charlie another chance, even reading the book shortly beforehand since it was meant to be more accurate, and finding that the preceding film was not quite as inaccurate to the book as some people make it out to be. After streaming the 2005 film on Max (formerly HBO Max), since I no longer owned a DVD copy, I appreciated it a little more for its attempts at book-accuracy, but still found myself overall preferring the 1971 version.

Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) lives in a run-down house with a poor family, whose main form of income comes from his father (Noah Taylor) working at a toothpaste factory with the job of screwing on the caps. Encouraged by his family, Charlie dreams to one day see inside Willy Wonka’s (Johnny Depp) chocolate factory and is fascinated by stories told to him by his Grandpa Joe (David Kelly), who used to work for Wonka. After a long period of silence and isolation, Wonka initiates a contest in which five lucky children will find one of five Golden Tickets hidden inside random Wonka bars, with the winners receiving a private tour of the factory and a special prize for only one of them at the end. Charlie’s family cannot afford to buy too many bars, not helped by Mr. Bucket losing his job to a robot, but against all odds, Charlie miraculously finds the last Golden Ticket, which instructs him to arrive at the factory on what happens to be the very next day, with Grandpa Joe volunteering to go with him.

 

Against all odds, Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) finds the last Golden Ticket.

 

Although I will do my best to discuss this film on its own merits, some comparisons with the earlier film will be inevitable due my own familiarity with it.

As advertised, this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book sticks a bit more closely to the source material in comparison to Willy Wonka, even including elements not featured in Willy Wonka such as Mr. Bucket’s existence and the story of Prince Pondicherry, as well as revising certain elements such as the chocolate river boat sequence and the Great Glass Elevator to more accurately reflect the source. Much like Willy Wonka, a lot of dialogue is also lifted directly from the book. That said, it still takes some creative liberties of its own, such as updating the setting to something more reflective of the time (ex. Charlie finds $10 on the ground instead of just $1, Mike Teavee is now a toxic gamer instead of a TV addict), altering Wonka’s formal introduction at the factory gates (which Willy Wonka was ironically more accurate about), and giving Wonka a rather unnecessary daddy issues-laden backstory that affects the pacing of the last act. On that note, Charlie’s interpretation of Wonka makes him seem a bit off, but not in a charming way like Gene Wilder’s take, rather in a way that leads to unfortunate comparisons with the late Michael Jackson.

Where Willy Wonka was limited by the technology of the early ‘70s, Charlie takes more advantage of the more advanced technology of the early ‘00s to more faithfully recreate some visual elements from the book. While Willy Wonka’s chocolate river looks more like brown water, Charlie’s chocolate river is a far more convincing effect. The same can be said for Violet Beauregarde’s transformation, which is more faithfully recreated to how it was described in the source material, as is the visual appearance of the Great Glass Elevator. Although some CG is noticeable, what’s more impressive is learning how much of it was not, including the chocolate room and the fact that Deep Roy was filmed as each individual Oompa-Loompa, with some animatronic work in places. Perhaps the most notable difference between both films is the Nut Sorting Room; whereas the aforementioned limitations made it so Willy Wonka replaces it with noticeably animatronic geese that lay golden eggs that are sorted by a machine, Charlie had the capability to not only restore this sequence as in the book, but they went the extra mile to actually train live squirrels for it, though there is still a noticeable switch to CG squirrels for the bulk of the attack on Veruca Salt.

 

The fact they trained real squirrels for this scene is even more impressive.

 

While making Mike Teavee a gamer makes sense in regards to the setting update, one thing I feel the need to comment about is the film’s depiction of gaming. In his introductory scene, Mike is shown playing what appears to be a facsimile of a first-person shooter on sixth-generation hardware (the film predated the launch of the Xbox 360 by about four months, so it’s more likely based on the original Xbox, which was a magnet for the genre, but even then the graphics appear to be ahead of the time), however he appears to somehow be playing it on an Atari 2600 with a flight stick controller, which is highly incompatible with said software. Although it’s a minor detail and is only seen very briefly, as an avid gamer myself, it still bothered me. That said, while I have not experienced this myself first-hand, people like Mike Teavee as depicted in this film unfortunately exist in some multiplayer settings, so at least that part is accurate.

 

Games also don't normally flashbang the player this hard, if ever.

 

For the most part, the film has some pretty solid casting, with Freddie Highmore’s Charlie Bucket being a particular highlight, plus the late David Kelly having a very believable dynamic with him as Grandpa Joe. While Charlie’s depiction of Veruca Salt in particular falls a little short of Willy Wonka’s depiction in my opinion, the other kids were still very well-cast overall, and although Dr. Wonka’s subplot is arguably superfluous to the main plot, casting the late Christopher Lee in the role guarantees a stellar performance regardless. Deep Roy also gets credit for his physical acting and how he was able to play every Oompa-Loompa and have it all appear seamless when put together. All that said, while Johnny Depp is a good actor, as seen in other Tim Burton projects as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, he was horribly miscast as Willy Wonka, with his otherwise admirable attempt at doing something different from Gene Wilder’s classic performance coming off as more creepy than charming, with his makeup, voice and hairstyle not helping in the slightest (though he does get credit for displaying his otherwise-unheard vocal range).

 

Johnny Depp is a good actor, but Gene Wilder he is not.

As with other works such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Danny Elfman’s music fires on all cylinders with this film, with the soundtrack featuring five original songs that are all memorable and sound distinct from one another. Four of these songs are based on the Oompa-Loompa songs featured in the book, even lifting lyrics directly from Dahl’s writing (with some minor rewrites for “Violet Beauregarde”), though these songs are understandably cut down for time since the original book’s lyrics can literally go on for several pages. Each of these songs also features a different style of music befitting the situation, with “Mike Teavee” going harder than it has any right to with its basis in metal. The one original song invented for the film, “Wonka’s Welcome Song”, has the flair of a catchy amusement park theme (It’s a Small World from Disneyland comes to mind), and in fact accomplishes this goal so well that I’ve had it stuck in my head since 2005.

While I still have a personal bias towards Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I can totally see how someone might overall prefer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on account of its level of accuracy to the source material and more convincing visual effects that have managed to stand the test of time. Both films are arguably flawed in their own ways, even surprisingly doing some things more accurately than the other, though I would still recommend watching both, whether you have read the book or not, before coming to your own conclusion.