For some time, I've been curious about whether a retroactive movie review concept could fly. Theoretically, there's some value in looking at whether a movie can speak to you after it was made. Some movies work well like this, some are even better so: I think The Shawshank Redemption is a classic example as a bit of a bust in the theatre, yet had this amazing following on video; even now I'm strangely drawn to it every time I run by it on TV. And I believe IMDB.com and RottenTomatoes.com keep a retroactive measure of a movie's following after it's been out for a while.
Watching this movie was something of a happy accident: this past week my one-year-old daughter got me up so early that I watched the whole thing on PVR before we had to get out the door (small object lesson in itself of what a baby does to your life).
Quick synopsis: Charlie is a really poor kid who loves Willy Wonka's chocolate even though he only has one bar a year as his birthday present. When Willy Wonka announces 5 Golden Tickets among all his factory's chocolate bars worldwide, the prize being a trip to his factory, Charlie defies the odds and wins the trip. Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, so it is indeed quite the trip.I'll structure these reviews with a 3-2-1 analysis (tweaked from Dr. Paul Spate after his 1day workshop on emotional intelligence).Three (3) Takeaways- I popped this on because I was thinking, hey, kid's movie, I can have it on and my daughter can watch when she's interested. Tim Burton's name in the opening credits clued me in that I might be a bit wrong. In fact, "it's Tim Burton" is probably review enough, esp if you have an opinion about The Nightmare Before Christmas (whether you've seen it or not). I guess I wasn't paying attention enough in grade school to remember this was really dark. My wife's reaction to me seeing it was pretty much "don't kids die in that?" (spoiler-ish: they don't actually die but it's a natural thought...). Roald Dahl's other book, James & the Giant Peach, was much lighter in my mind. In contrast, this thing was so dark. I'm okay with some darkness, really I am, but for a movie I think is aimed at kids, this was shield-their-eyes dark a few times. It reminded me a lot of Edward Gorey's creepy (and more explicitly homicidal) Gashlycrumb Tinies which were out at about the same time the original Charlie book was.
- Dark as it was, parts of it served the purpose as background eye candy while I watched my daughter play. Most exemplary was the squirrel room: our little one gives a cuteness review to animals by how much she talks to them, live or recorded, and she talked to those squirrels lots.
- Weird bit of trivia, the band Veruca Salt is named after a girl in this story. Not sure why they went there actually, the character's disturbing on many levels. Unless the book is somehow very different.
Two (2) Questions I Still Have
- Does darkness have to be this dark to serve its purposes?
- Is Tim Burton, or Johnny Depp for that matter, or author Roald Dahl, trying to teach a lesson here, or are they just like this?
One (1) Action / Response / Conclusion
The movie ends up ok but for me, the happy ending never quite makes up for all the darkness it's traipsed in along the way. I can see where the Burtons, Depps and Dahls are coming from: paying attention for 5 minutes to the usual saccharine kids' fare makes me want to tell a story as dark as this as a reaction. However, it's a reminder to me to rein in the darkness (even negativity, criticism or sarcasm) that I put out there: while dark has its purpose, I believe that going too far to the dark side doesn't really help anyone get back to any beneficial light.
