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is charlie and the chocolate factory 2005 movie good?

watermelony2k

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The original film was one of my childhood favorites, and so was the book. I've heard that the 2005 adaptation follows the book more closely -- is this true? And how is it as a movie in general?
 
It had good and bad qualities imho... it got some of the quasi-creepy mood from the book that the old Wilder version largely dropped, but it was a strange film to be sure.
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A lot of people I know loved it, but I wasn't a huge fan. Too weird just for the sake of being weird.
 
It's a decent film, and certainly has more of the books details, but I'm not sure I'd prefer it over the original 1970s version. That version is less book accurate but seems to have more of a heart to it, while the 2005 version is kind of weird for weirdness sake. Wonka's a different character in the book than he is in either version.
 
The rooms of the factory didn't seem right, to me. They were just huge, abstract spaces that didn't seem like rooms inside a building at all. Tim Burton all over, really.
 
I liked the movie overall - but the worst part IMO was Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka to have little to like or appeal to, versus Wilder's OTT version. Something about having Wonka be a depressed neurotic just doesn't work for me.

Mark
 
For a movie that endorses child abuse, it was quite enjoyable.

Letting kids, no matter how bratty, run lose in your whack-ass dangerous candy factory...is pretty much child abuse.

Deep Roy is a bit creepy en masse, too.
 
The original film was one of my childhood favorites, and so was the book. I've heard that the 2005 adaptation follows the book more closely -- is this true? And how is it as a movie in general?

No. It focuses way too much on the creepy, oddly Michael Jackson sterotype meets Frankenfurter-like Wonka. It's overmade, over-produced, lacks the whimsy of the classic original and it just plain sucks.
 
Depp IS creepy in this one...and I would say overall I prefer the original. But, then again, that's the one I grew up with...and nobody but nobody touches Gene Wilder in that role. Depp just reminded me of a Michael Jackson-ish pedophile.
 
I really enjoyed it; I liked it more than the Gene Wilder version, too. But I didn't grow up with that one, so take that for what its worth.
 
This movie is rather polarizing, so your best bet is to just ignore all comments, good and bad, and just watch it. It really is something that you have to experience yourself to know for your own sensibilities whether or not it is "good".

That being said... I love Burton's film. I even did my final, persuasive speech in Speech 101 about how Burton's version is a more accurate adaptation of the book than Stuart's. I got an A, and based on the pre-speech and post-speech class surveys, I convinced over half the class to finally see Burton's movie (and a good majority of them said they felt my argument was sound).

Then again, I've never been a fan of the musical, so... I think I went into Burton's film with far fewer preconceptions than many people.

Joy
 
When I was a kid, I absolutely loved the book.

I'm not sure I've ever seen the Gene Wilder movie all the way through. If I have, it was a long time ago and I don't really remember it now.

The Johnny Depp version was OK. It's pretty standard Burton. While some of his early stuff (Batman Returns, Ed Wood, & The Nightmare Before Christmas) posesses a brilliant gothic beauty to them, some of his later stuff was just rehashing his old stuff without much flair (Corpse Bride, Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd) or just weird for weird's sake, like Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (and what I suspect will happen with his new Alice in Wonderland adaptation).

There is one addition made to the Burton version that I liked.
Revealing that Willy Wonka's father was a tyrannical dentist played by Chistopher Lee. I thought that was very clever.
 
I went to see it with a friend and her two kids and another friend (like me) who had no kids. The second friend and I laughed like crazy at the parts where Wonka/Depp was sarcastic on the kids--or where the brats got what they deserved. We laughed so hard at those parts we got looks from others.

Neither of us is that fond of kids. Don't hate them, but don't have them.
 
The thing I remember most (other than Johnny looking like Ensign Ro), was the strange emphasis on cabbage soup and apparent abject English poverty. That was ugly and grotesque. I guess it was a horror flick at bottom.
 
Well, both those bits are in the book, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary really.

My first viewing of Burton's film was at a pre-screening. It was FULL of kids, which I was incredibly excited about, because a majority of them may possibly have never seen the musical and perhaps had never even read the book (I myself didn't read the book until the tie-in edition came out in '05).

It was MAGICAL. The gasps and cheers of the little kids when they realized Charlie had found the Golden Ticket... I would give anything to experience that movie with that audience again. It was magnificent.
 
The addition mentioned in the spoiler above was made with the approval of Dahl's widow, for what that's worth.

...and the abject poverty is just like the book, and one of the things I really missed in the Wilder version. Mr. Bucket's job in the book is screwing caps on toothpaste tubes, and Charlie feels immensely guilty for buying a candy bar with the money he finds and not giving it to the family for food. I was also mad that the Wilder version just killed the dad off. Good thing it wasn't a Disney movie or the mom would've died too. :rolleyes:

I was a teen when the GW movie came out and liked it, but had read the books years before and loved them much more. Each version, even as psychotically different as they are [and differently psychotic :D], shows aspects of the book that the other doesn't.

I agree that we've never seen the book's Wonka onscreen, and probably never will.

P.S. If they ever film Great Glass Elevator we can get CGI Vermicious Knids!! :lol:

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