Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Burton)

Overall:

It's not easy doing justice to a Roald Dahl book. The man was a creative genius with such imagination that to recreate one of his tales on screen would require a tremendous amount of effort, not to mention extreme skill. Luckily, Tim Burton was willing to put in the hard yards to not only do justice to this literary childrens' masterpiece, but to bring it to life. The work poured into this 2005 film was enormous, but the result was nothing less than spectacular.

'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' is possibly my favourite Roald Dahl book; I'd highly recommend it to anyone of any age. I love what the filmmakers did to this movie, because it seems as if they read the book, let their imaginations run wild, and then put what they saw onto a screen.

It was brilliant.

Plot:

Don't you hate it when filmmakers think they know better than the author of the book on which the film is based, and make drastic, unnecessary changes to the plot? Of course, it is ridiculous to say that a film should not deviate from the novel at all. There are always some sensible, smallish tweaks to the original story that are needed to make the movie more cinematic, or more understandable, or to fit into the time frame with more ease, but a lot of the time the filmmakers take these changes much too far.

Thankfully, in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', Dahl's genius has been appreciated and the main story has been largely untouched. The main changes came from delving deeper into Willy Wonka's past and developing the character more, so they were worthwhile.

Characters:


Charlie



Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) - The thing which defines Charlie Bucket in the book 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' is that he is quite normal. His family is poor, which makes him nice and appreciative - not rotten like the other children who win tickets to see Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This is how the filmmakers kept him in the movie.

I liked this. Charlie was not 'special'. He didn't have any super-powers, he wasn't a genius, and he didn't have any cool gadgets. He was normal, like us. We can relate to this boy!
Also, in a world where many films have main characters that are selfish, reinforcing the 'it's all about me' message that people seem to like so much, Charlie was a refreshing change. Polite and caring, he's a good role model to the kids watching the movie.
Thumbs up to Tim Burton for keeping Charlie's character true to the book!



Augustus

Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) - Grandpa George tells Charlie that the first person to find a golden ticket will be "Fat, fat, fat!" Augustus Gloop sure did prove him right! The actor had to wear a fat suit to appear porky enough for the part, and was constantly eating a bar of chocolate. He wasn't quite disgusting enough to put me off chocolate, though...  but a good portrayal of this character.

Veruca

Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) - The way Veruca Salt was portrayed in this film was absolutely priceless. Julia Winter played this spoilt brat brilliantly. It was so entertaining!
Veruca is also a demonstration to children of how having everything isn't necessarily that great. That, and that throwing tantrums makes you look ridiculous.

Violet

Violet Beauregarde (Anasophia Robb) - I imagine that Roald Dahl must have really hated seeing kids chewing gum all the time when he created the character of Violet Beauregarde, because in the book her sole purpose was to show children what a disgusting habit it is to chew gum all day. The filmmakers have expanded Violet's character a bit to turn her into a girl bent on winning anything and everything, mainly to do with chewing gum. This wasn't a bad change, as it made her a less likable, less deserving character.




Mike

Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) - The novel 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' was written in 1964, where not that many people owned televisions. Even then, Dahl could tell that children were spending far too long in front of screens. The original Mike Teavee was a kid who watched lots of spy/gun shows, and carried around some ludicrous number of guns with him. This film was made in 2005, so the filmmakers have modernised Mike a bit into a violent video gamer. This is established early into the film as the audience are introduced to him playing a video game, yelling, "DIE, DIE, DIE!" Unfortunately, the filmmakers chose to make him a know-all when it came to science, which I thought slightly undermined the 'TV makes you dumb' message. Apart from that, though, I thought that Mike Teavee was portrayed very well, and made the film seem more modern.



Wonka

 Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) - A lot is left to interpretation when it comes to Willy Wonka in the novel. He's simply seen as some marvellous, generous man who happens to be an eccentric genius. When putting this into a film, though, one has to consider exactly what an eccentric genius looks like. The book describes him as a man who wears a top hat, a purple waistcoat, green pants and a black goatee. Obviously, that doesn't tell us a lot about who he is and how he got to where he did. What I like about the film is that they looked at Willy Wonka's backstory: what his childhood was like, etc. On top of being very entertaining, it helped us as the audience to realise why Mr. Wonka was so... unusual. Johnny Depp was said to have based his character on Michael Jackson. It wasn't quite what I imagined Willy Wonka to be when I was eight years old, reading the book, but I prefered this to the Willy Wonka from the previous film rendition (who was kind of scary).



Oompa Loompas

 Oompa Loompas (Deep Roy): All the Oompa Loompas (Tens? Hundreds?Thousands, maybe?) were played by just one man in this film, which I thought was fantastic. A lot of work, yes. Effective, definitely. The attention to detail was phenomenal. All the dances to the songs were choreographed and excecuted perfectly in time. Keeping them at knee height for the whole movie (involving a lot of shooting on oversized sets and CGI) was done so smoothly that the first few times I watched the film, I thought the actor must have been naturally that small. The Oompa Loompas were a hilarious part of the film that really helped bring it to life and added some great humour to the film. Loved them. :)

Themes:
In the book, all the themes are fairly self-explanitory, and most of the important ones have been outlined in the character section of this review. To my delight, the film included the great majority of these. It also added a theme: the importance of family. I still can't decide whether I'm pleased or upset that they included this (to be honest, I'm not sure I care too much), because on one hand, it fights for the main focus of the film, leaving less time for the themes in the book to be explored, but on the other hand, it's a family movie and it didn't really hurt to have it thrown in. I suppose it doesn't really matter too much.

Props / Scenery:
Wow. Just wow.
The sets for this film were absolutely amazing. Wacky, beautiful, eccentric, fun, mysterious, colourful... they were Burton's imagination come to life. The effort that was put in to create the sets must have been phenomenal. I can say one thing: this was no half-hearted endevour. The pictures are so vivid... Charlie's tiny little house with its twisted charm in the foreground, with the dull, orderly city behind it and Willy Wonka's huge chocolate factory looming over it all, dark, mysterious and inviting... A room where everything, from the candied grass to the viscous chocolate river is edible... you can imagine being in every single scene of the movie with no difficulty, which draws the viewer right in.
Again, wow.

Special Effects:
As has been the trend with this film, the special effects were so great that the viewer couldn't tell they were special effects. Well, I couldn't, anyway. Take, for example, the squirrels in the nut room. When I thought about it, I could never figure out whether they were real or CGI. They looked as if they were real ones, but I was quite sure they couldn't be trained to do what they did. It turned out that it was a clever blend of filming real squirrels, CGI and animatronic puppets. Animal trainers spent three months training baby squirrels to run where they wanted them to and appear to be cracking nuts. Three months! Talk about making an effort! The only special effect I thought could have been a bit more realistic was Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry. It looked slightly fake. Yet again, what's realistic about somebody turning into a blueberry? Altogether, the SFX were very good.

Music:
The music in this film is probably one of my favourite scores ever. It fit so perfectly into the film that I could probably write an essay on it. But I won't, because I can't be bothered and nobody would read it anyway. So I'll try to fit all of what I want to say into a couple of paragraphs:
The music is all done by Danny Elfman - the score, the Oompa Loompa songs... he even sang all the different Oompa Loompa voices himself, and it was perfect. The score he composed for the opening credits was the best part, in my opinion: low brass playing mysterious, rising undertones; percussion enforcing the in a regular, mechanical beat that emphasised the factory background; Oompa Loompa voices singing in a somewhat sickly-sweetly manner that reminds the viewer of candy; all meshed together in a theme that intrigues the audience and draws them right into the film from the very start. It just goes to show what a high standard the music is at not only to have made me interested in the opening credits (which, admittedly, are generally the most boring part of the film apart from the end credits), but to make that scene one of my favourites in the film.
The Oompa Loompa songs are also brilliant - each of them is so unique, with a completely different style each, but all of them are utterly entertaining. What I was particularly impressed with was the fact that the lyrics were all taken from the book, once again honouring Roald Dahl and his masterpiece. The soundtrack is one I would highly reccommend to anyone who has seen the film or read the book (to those who haven't, the lyrics might seem a bit... odd).

Good Things:

• The complete respect with which the filmmakers treated every aspect of the book :D
• The casting - all the actors suited their characters very well
• The Oompa Loompas - a lot of work, but worth it
• The sets. Amazing.
• The special effects - for the most part, very realistic
• The music

Bad things:
(Not much here, really)

• Being nitpicky, perhaps the Violet-turns-into-a-blueberry scene needed to be slightly more realistic
• No sequel! And now, Freddie Highmore is probably too old to play Charlie in 'Charlie and the Glass Elevator', which is very disappointing.

Overall:
This film really respects the book (which, being a bookworm, I cannot encourage more), and look where that got the filmmakers - a movie that made heaps of money because everybody loved it! I'm sure that Roald Dahl would have loved it. As far as adaptations go, I'm giving it five stars (out of five). For entertainment value, I give it four and a half stars. I highly reccommend both the film and the book to all of my readers.

~IoP

Far-fetched Mr Fox

Hello, bookworms! What's this? SON has posted TWICE in less than two weeks??? Again, I would ask you all to refrain from passing out until AFTER you have read and - all importantly - COMMENTED on this post :)
Hey there to my two new followers, by the way! Barbara, Sir Lipine and Ashywashy - be nice to them. ;)
Don't forget about the nagging principle, guys. Remember, nagging + procrastination = motivation + results!
So finally, I have the review for 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', dedicated to my awesome brother Sir Lipine the Awesome. Please forgive me, Sir Lipine, for taking so long! It was the homework's fault!
Getting down to business, when I heard this movie was coming out, I was very excited. 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' happens to be my favourite Roald Dahl book of all time, right from when my mum read it to my siblings and I when we were very young as a bedtime story. The story is a delightful, fun tale full of adventure and mischief. The 'bad guys' (Boggis, Bunce and Bean) are truly awful and hideous in every sense of the word. The book is indeed a great pleasure to read, which I rediscovered when reading it for research.
"But how does the movie compare to the book?" you ask. That is a very good question. Allow me to do my best to answer it:

Overall position of the film:

Look, I'll be frank here straight away. The movie is nothing like the book. At best, you could say it was loosely based on the book. If you're looking for a film that captures the essence of 'Fantastic Mr.Fox', don't watch it. If, however, you want to watch a quirky movie that doesn't really have much of a point, go right ahead and see it. I did sort of like it, despite it being really weird. And Sir Lipine loved it. But I was also quite disappointed because I did not at all see Roald Dahl's story on the screen.

Plot:

Unfortunately, the plot is not really based at all on the book. Rather than following the daring exploits of Fantastic Mr. Fox as he gives those mean farmers what they deserve, the film follows the story of an average fox going through a midlife crisis (now you see why 'far-fetched' was in the title) who thinks he has to go back to the old excitement of stealing poultry from high-security farms to make himself feel complete. Roald Dahl's solution to the problem of the three mean farmers was ignored, and instead the filmmakers try to invent a complicated plot which is, put nicely, hardly genius.

Characters:

Bean- If you have read the book, you will know just how absolutely disgusting Farmer Bean is. If you have not, let me quote a passage to you:

Bean never took a bath. He never even washed. As a result, his earholes were clogged with all kinds of muck and wax and bits of chewing gum and dead flies and stuff like that. This made him deaf. [...] Bean rubbed the back of his neck with a dirty finger. He had a boil coming there and it itched.

See what I mean? Absolutely disgusting. Roald Dahl truly has a gift for creating the most loathsome characters in children's literature. In the movie, unfortunately, bean is not nearly as revolting as in the book. He's somewhat mean, and sort of tall, but by no means ridiculous. The beauty of Roald Dahl's bad guys is that they are ridiculous, and hideously so. Farmer Bean in the film was far too ordinary.

Bunce and Boggis- The film was quite strange in that it quoted the book more than I have ever seen in a film, yet it deviated from the book drastically. When introducing the farmers, Badger (who is a lawyer in the film - go figure) quotes directly from the book what they are like, how Boggis is extremely fat, Bunce is extremely short, and Bean is extremely tall and lean. Again, even though the film introduced them with the same words the book did, their disgusting personalities didn't really shine through and they just seemed like grumpy old men rather than ridiculously mean farmers.

Mr. Fox- I hate to have to say this, but Mr. Fox was hardly as fantastic, dashing, ingenious and heroic as Mr. Fox was in the book. As mentioned in the plot summary above, he's a fox going through a midlife crisis which, put nicely, is stupid, pointless and unrealistic, as he is a FOX. Okay, so maybe it's unrealistic for a fox to be noble and smart, as Dahl wrote Mr. Fox, but hey, it's a kid's book, and you're allowed to do that sort of stuff. This movie, however, wasn't really aimed at kids. I'm not saying that it's an adult movie or anything, but most of the (terrible) humour and (unoriginal) storyline would have gone straight over an eight year-old's head. Back to talking about Mr. Fox, though, the biggest problem I had with him was that I didn't really like him. He's the protagonist, everyone's supposed to love him! Instead, he was an ordinary, selfish fox who risked the lives of his family to have a bit of excitement. The filmmakers failed miserably in bringing Fantastic Mr. Fox to life.

Ash- Now, in the book, Mr. Fox has four adorable little cubs (is that the right word for a baby fox? Correct me if I'm wrong) who are just as thoughtful and smart as their father. Did we get this in the movie? No. Instead, we get Ash, Mr. Fox's only son, who is moody and selfish and just plain WEIRD. I am especially annoyed that they called him Ash, because I personally quite like the name Ash, and this just ruins it. I personally think that far too much glory is given to Ash in the film, because all the characters are telling Mr. Fox to accept his son, even though he is 'different'. Well, Ash isn't so much different as he is RUDE to everyone around him, and instead of just making an excuse that being rude is part of Ash's 'different' personality, I would say that Mr. Fox needs to teach his son some manners and stop being so selfish.

Other Characters- None of the other characters are really worth mentioning, all you need to know is that not one of them is the way they are in the books. Even the Rat has been changed in a pathetic character arc that the filmmakers really shouldn't have bothered with.

Themes:

This really is one of the strangest films I've ever seen when it comes to themes. Every time you think someone is going to make a point, they don't, and what they say end up being just like the movie as a whole: pointless. Overall, there really aren't that many themes to discuss. I suppose you could perhaps squeeze the theme of family in there, in how Mr. Fox comes to appreciate his family a little bit more, but really that is a weak theme that barely shows through the film. When it comes to it, to be honest, the movie actually doesn't have really have anything to say.

Messages:

Ditto the themes- there were none. :'(

Setting:

Nothing particularly special about the scenery, it was really quite average. Not once in the film did I think, "Wow, that place is exactly how I imagined it in the book!", and nothing really stood out.

Animation:

This film was made using stop animation with puppets. Overall, the picture at times wasn't as smooth as, say, a Wallace and Grommit movie, but seeing as at some points in production the animators were shooting 25 scenes at a time, the process was quite genius. The animators came up with a whole new program that enabled them to communicate with the director live, wherever he was, and for this I congratulate them. To see a video of how they did this, click here.

Music:

The music matched the movie, in that it was somewhat quirky but really rather boring. However, there was one theme in the music I really loved, which was children singing:

"Boggis, Bunce and Bean,

One fat, one short, one lean.

These horrible crooks, so different in looks,

Are none the less equally mean."

which was a rhyme in the novel that the children sang, so I thought that was quite fitting in the soundtrack. Apart from that small song, though, the music was nothing special.

Things I hated about the film:

• The characters (particularly Mr. Fox, Ash, and Farmer Bean
• The plot, which the filmmakers completely destroyed
• The lack of themes to discuss
• The overall pointlessness of the film
• It was BORING

Things I didn't mind about the film:

• The animation was okay
• The children's rhyme was cool
• Quoting the book in many places was good (it would have been even better if they

Overall:

The root of all the problems in this film was that the filmmakers completely disregarded the novel and basically marred it until it was almost unrecognisable. If they had any respect for the book, they would have seen it for the pure genius it was and tried to make the film as close to the book as possible. I realise that with any book-to-film adaptation, some changes are going to be made, but this is just pitiful. Fantastic Mr. Fox is such a wonderful novel, and it hurts me to see that so little effort went into preserving the original story. I would advise all bookworms who listen to my opinion (you are few and far between) not to watch this film, and if you are unfortunate enough to see it, watch it as a quirky movie with no point rather than an adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox. I don't like to be this scathing, but if you want good reviews from nerds such as myself, you're going to have to make good adaptations of my favourite books.

Signing off,
~SON

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