she said/ he said

Me and DB had talked about doing tag team movie reviews because we always like to talk about movies around the house but we very often disagree. A movie finally came up that we've both seen, so here goes (this is a bit long but hopefully fun to read and as blacktable said today, it's friday and you know you ain't got shit to do):

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

She said:

Honestly, my enthusiasm for writing this review has waned somewhat because I saw it over a week ago. Perhaps you can draw some conclusions about its staying power from that fact alone. I wasn't a huge Roald Dahl fan as a kid, but I did read the first installment of this series, and I LOVED the original movie version. I think Gene Wilder (Jewish) is the perfect Willy Wonka. He is pretty prickly to all the kids during the movie, but when he shows his nice side in the end my little heart melted. I want to watch it again to see if my heart is still capable of melting, I think it has now transformed into shiny stainless steel with a liquid nitrogen interior, surrounded by a fence made of diamonds. I think I just described Kanye West's new necklace, and now I sound like Joan Rivers (Jewish) trying to be hip.

On to the new version: Things start off badly with some terrible CG of the factory assembly line, the kind where you can't get your bearing because there is nothing real within the frame of the screen and it looks like a bad video game, which is a definite portent of things to come. This movie has some of the worst CG I have seen in a long time. The first part with the build up to Charlie finding the golden ticket is fine. Cute kid (equally as cute as the old Charlie, if not cuter), cute family, cute Grandpa Joe. All fine. The other golden ticket winners are introduced. The make-up artists have done this weird thing where they make all the kids look airbrushed, I guess to depersonalize them even more so that you won't be shocked when bad things happen to them. I don't like these kids as much. I prefer all the kids from the first movie. Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka is finally introduced, in a pretty funny scene. Lots has been written about the bizarre way he has chosen to play Wonka, so I'll try to be brief, I get a bit of Pee Wee Herman, no Michael Jackson at all, a little bit of sixties swinger lingo is thrown in just to make things weird, and he says things like "all righty then" that I find to be not that funny and modern in a way that throws things off. It's kinda like a David Spade bit at times. He is funny, but his schtick (Yiddish word that perfectly describes this concept) is distracting. The whole movie is balanced on Depp making this work, and he doesn't.

Moving on, Oompa Loompas-horrible, worse than the first one if that's possible. I shrank with dread every time I knew they were about to invade the screen. One thing I have to mention is the scene where Violet transforms into a blueberry. In the original they just inflated a balloon under her clothes and it looked kinda crappy (on a side note, I'm sure that small cult of fetishists who love to see womens body parts grow very quickly regard that scene as a classic. They exist, I'm not joking.), but it looks so unbelievably bad in the new movie. She goes from a real girl to this awkwardly moving creepy cartoony thing.

By far the most egregious misstep on Tim Burton's part is his insertion of some flashbacks and a subplot with Wonka's dad, all of which are not from the original book. Burton needs to get some therapy for his issues with his dad. I couldn't find it on the net, but I know I've read articles where he reveals that they had almost no relationship at all. It sounds like his father was distant and cold. That's sad, and he certainly can explore that theme in his movies if he wants to (and he dedicated his last film, the mediocre Big Fish entirely to a father/son relationship), but it does not fit very well into this movie. It takes away Wonka's mystery, and it's all too pat and settled by the end. It doesn't end with the excitement of Charlie embarking on his greatest adventure, which is a thrilling way for a movie to end and something that a kid can wrap his or her imagination around.

He said:

It's impossible to consider Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
without comparing it against the Mel Stuart-Gene Wilder 1971 film
version...for as much as that movie has been an irritant to me throughout my
childhood and young adolescence (going on 17 years now), I've developed a
grudging respect for it as a cultural touchstone.
Still, don't think my shoulders didn't hunch in revulsion everytime my
childhood friends demanded another screening of the film. I understand that
to many people our age, dismissing this film is an undefensible
position...but then I feel the same way about "One From the Heart", and lord
knows that film has its share of detractors.
I think I always found something suspiciously authoritarian about a story
that mutilates and humiliates children for minor defects of character while
Charlie gets whatever he wants because he's a pleasant, self-effacing little
douchey two-shoes. I mean, does the fat kid have to be tortured to get
across a point about overeating? They can't just give him some carrot
sticks?
I don't hold the 1971 version in any reverence, and thankfully neither does
Tim Burton, as he remakes the story in his own image. The new version is a
more complete fantasy compared to the decidedly setbound Gene Wilder
version. Burton eschews a lot of problematic elements from that film -- the
pointless espionage subplot, Charlie and his Grandfather floating, the
general tone of mean-spiritedness. Most important, Burton is simply a
better visual fantasist than Mel Stuart -- images such as the Buckets'
impossibly bent-back cottage, the melting puppet show, and the surprisingly
poetic last shot are still spinning in my head...there's a not a single shot
in the Mel Stuart film that can match up.
The film relies heavily on CGI effects, and no one has more virulently
opposed to the proliferation of digital effects than me (I have a portfolio
on the subject), butfor the most part it works here, and probably helps to
soften the inherent cruelty of the story.
And then there's Depp -- considering recent events, would he have
reconsidered his concept of Wonka as a pasty-skinned, breathy-voiced,
child-like recluse? Or was that the whole point? I know no one wants to
dwell on the Jacko comparisons, but this is essentially the story of a pale,
Peter Pan-like freak isolated by celebrity who uses his traumatic childhood
as an excuse to lure children away from their parents to live in his magical
wonderland of chocolate waterfalls and implied pederasty. To Depp's credit,
though, he stays committed to the character, never settling for a winking
performance, and his Wonka becomes a figure of surprising pathos. The child
performances improve upon those in the original as well, with each
inhabiting their characters fully.
The story still plays out in the same schematic way, with the children
introduced and offed one-by-one. Burton and screenwriter John August flesh
it out with backstories for Wonka's childhood and the importation of the
Ooompa-Loompas. These same like controversial changes for fans, but I
thought they helped enhance the fantasy element of the story. Burton is not
afraid to make this story his own, which is what more filmmakers should be
doing if we're going to remake every movie ever shot. Otherwise, what's the
point?
Burton makes his schare of bad decisions here, including a boat ride that
looks terrible, and choreographed numbers from the Ooompa-Loompas that start
off grating and only grow more so. However, I viewed these as minor
irritations...if you hold in the Gene Wilder version close to your heart,
you may see this as a sacrilege. I know that I was horrified when the Adam
Sandler remake of "The Longest Yard" changed the immortal line "I broke his
fucking nose" from the original film to "I broke-ded his nose" in order to
get a PG-13.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: B
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: C
The Longest Yard (original): A-
The Longest Yard (remake...or as I like to call it, Worse Than Revenge of
the Sith): D+