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And
then he gave us Planet of the Apes... and what the hell was
that?
Let me tell you; It was crap, complete, abject,
unadulterated, unfiltered, nauseating crap.
I wasn't sure I could ever forgive him, and so, it was with
a heavy heart that I went, two years later and not a little
intoxicated, to see what the heck the fuss was all about
with Big Fish.... and I left with tears in my eyes, not
solely due to the amount of alcohol in my bloodstream.
I know that because I own it and have watched it several
times and taken apart by it just as much each time I watch
it. Truly a brilliant treatise on fathers and sons,
families and legends.
Tonight, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
In preparation, I reread both Dahl's amazing books (the
second actually is more odd than amazing, but classic
nonetheless), rewatched the Gene Wilder classic and
instilled in my head the idea that, despite all these
standards, I should attend with an open mind, and prepare to
watch a new movie.
And so it is!... kinda. Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory is terrific, fun, and wonderfully entertaining.
Should I regale you with tales of Johnny Depp's acting?
No, we all know he's wonderful, but the question is, how do
you tackle Gene Wilder's brilliance? Gene Wilder
nailed Roald Dahl's Wonka, nailed him to a wall and stepped
into this body, so on was Wilder? How do you take that
on and redo it? It almost seems as pointless as Vince
Vaughn trying to be Norman Bates. Perkins was it;
leave it be! Well, you do it by taking the soul of the
character and learning it, then taking your own
interpretation of the source material and mixing that sole
into it, with careful knowledge of the previous brilliance
of portrayal one... and so is born... another Wonka.
Is this Dahl's Wonka? I don't think so, but it's a
good one nonetheless, and interesting one, an acceptable
Wonka for thirty years after the first version of the film.
The story here is much closer to the novel, sticking more
carefully with less inventions, except of course, the one
major invention where Burton again gets to instill his
message on family, love and comradery. And we're all
okay with the addition because it gets Christopher Lee into
the movie. In fact, the addition makes sense and is
one I think Roald Dahl might just have been okay with, had
he thought of it.
Overall, the film is very good, lots of fun and quirky like
Burton is always quirky, combined with Dahl's quirkiness and
the overall quirk of Johnny Depp. It's clever, it
moves fast, it's good and creepy at times in a rather
stealthy way (I found the squirrels a little freaky) and
it's delightful like it oughta be. It doesn't and
could never replace the original, a lesson Burton seems to
have learned with the Apes (who he references with Mike
Teevee), but updates a timeless tale for a world of less
innocence and more danger, all these 34 years after Gene
donned the tophat and taught us all wonder.
More than anything, it's a fairy tale, a Tim Burton fairy
tale which is more fairy tale than anything Disney puts out.
Like the Brothers Grimm knew, Burton knows that Fairy Tales
aren't all fairy dust and wonder, but they're horror and
cruelty, just like the real world. The beauty of a
true fairy tale is that it teaches you how to overcome the
horror and cruelty, to achieve the wonder and magic.
Wonka learns it, Charlie knew it and we're just a little
wiser for the watching. Well done, Tim, there's just
enough Edward Scissorhands in this to make it wonderful.
A fine remake, now we can all continue forgetting Planet of
the Apes ever happened. |
