F*ck Tim Burton. When he superciliously sneered at the first adaptation of Roald Dahls seminal childrens book Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, he claimed he disliked it - calling it sappy and bemoaning, like Dahl himself, all the changes the film had made to the source material and Dahls original script. There are, of course, more changes and alterations made in Burtons typically overblown fantasy. For a start, he gives Wonka a sappy backstory with an estranged father, not trusting the character as he was to appeal to the audience. He pulls out all his usual tricks: trying too hard to be dark and off the wall that he ends up being self-consciously look-at-me-Im-mad weird, like a dad trying to act cool for teenage kids. In trying too hard to be kooky, to be Burtonesque, he screws up where the original adaptation succeeds best. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was one of the first kids films to deliberately appeal to adults as well as to children, wickedly satirical and almost casually subversive. Like Watership Down, the 1971 film didnt really find the huge fanbase that it would develop later on until the advent of home video and repeated showings on television throughout the eighties. Still, it delivers on every possible level. The Oscar-nominated songs - especially Pure Imagination, one of the supposedly out-of-order inventions for the film - are fantastic, the soundtrack instantly memorable. Gene Wilders sly, subtly misanthropic Wonka is the star of the film (something Dahl didnt approve of), carelessly inattentive, quoting classic literature apropos of nothing, gently mocking the horrendous predicaments that the spoiled children find themselves in. He tells more of a story with just those sad eyes and that wistful smile than Burton did with the entire awkwardly tacked on bad dad plot digression.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
