WILLY WONKA and the Chocolate Factory is a musical fable, a cult classic for both children and adults. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) is a poor boy who can barely support his family. He finds the last of the five "golden tickets" in a Wonka Bar, which allows him to tour the strangest candy factory in the world. Charlie and his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) visit the thrilling and dangerous factory with four insufferable brats who are also lucky winners. All have been approached by Ansel Slugworth (Gunter Meisner), who wants an Everlasting Gobstopper, a candy that can be licked forever without losing its flavour.
Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), reclusive and enigmatic owner of the mysterious candy factory, is the tour guide. The psychedelic trip through the factory is partly a children's paradise, but also a creepy funhouse. Wonka's workers are small orange men known as Oompa Loompas. The fantastic set includes rivers of flowing chocolate, giant edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper, coat hooks shaped like hands that move, and candy bars that can be taken out of TV screens. When the kids take Everlasting Gobstoppers and start to run amuck, violating Wonka's ethics, one by one they disappear. Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson) bloats with blueberry juice, Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner) falls into a chocolate river, Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole) is a bad egg and goes down the garbage chute, and Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen) is sent by Wonkavision.
(Charlie and Grandpa are floating in the Fizzy Lifting room and Grandpa does a somersault)
Charlie: "Hey, you did it, Grandpa."
Grandpa: "Ohhhh... ohhhh, I think I hit an air pocket."
Charlie: "You can fly to the moon this way."
Grandpa: "Let's just fly south for the winter."
Charlie: "Why not? I'm a bird!"
Grandpa: "I'm a plane!"
Charlie: "I'm... going too high!"
Only Charlie and Grandpa Joe remain. Willy Wonka explains that they survived because they drank the forbidden Fizzy Lifting Drink without permission. Charlie gives his Everlasting Gobstopper back, proving his honesty, and wins not only a lifetime supply of chocolate, but the entire Wonka factory as well. It turns out Ansel Slugworth is actually an employee of the factory.
The movie is an adapatation of Roald Dahl's 1964 novel,"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Dahl also wrote the movie script, although it was rewritten by David Seltzer (uncredited). This semi-satirical musical fantasy is tremendously imaginative, entertaining, charming, and fun for all age groups. However, some reviewers think the film has a cruel edge and is somewhat subversive. Others complain there is too much moralizing.
Eccentric purple-clad Willy Wonka often speaks in epigrams and says very witty things, such as: "Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple"; "If the good Lord had intended us to walk he wouldn't have invented roller-skates"; "A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men."; "The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last."; and "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." My favorite is, "There's so much time, but so little to do." Willy Wonka uses many literary quotations, added by David Seltzer when he re-wrote Roald Dahl's script.
Music is by British songwriters Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Musical direction was by Walter Scharf. The songs are: "The Candy Man" (performed by Aubrey Woods), "Charlie's Paper Run", "Cheer Up, Charlie" (performed by Diana Sowle), "(I've Got A) Golden Ticket" (performed by Jack Albertson and Peter Ostrum), "Pure Imagination" (Performed by Gene Wilder), "Oompa Loompa Doompa-De-Do" (Performed by the Oompa Loompas), "The Wondrous Boat Ride" (performed by Gene Wilder), "Everlasting Gobstoppers", "The Bubble Machine", "Wonkamobile", "Wonkavision", "Wonkavator", "The Rowing Song" (performed by Gene Wilder), "Ach So Fromm" (performed by Gene Wilder) and "I Want It Now" (performed by Julie Dawn Cole).
Lines in the song "Sweet Lovers Love the Spring Time" are from Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, taken from the Celtic ballad "It Was a Lover and His Lass". The quote "We are the music-makers..." is from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's ODE. When Willy Wonka plays the piano, Mrs. Teevee says it is Rachmaninoff, although it is actually Mozart (it's a joke). The final Oompa Loompa song took over 5 takes to get it right, although one Oompa Loompa in the foreground obviously doesn't know the words to the song.
The cast also includes: Roy Kinnear (Mr. Henry Salt), Leonard Stone (Mr. Sam Beauregarde), Dora Denney (Mrs. Teevee), Ursula Reit (Mrs. Gloop), Diana Sowle (Mrs. Bucket), Aubrey Woods (Bill), David Battley (Mr. Turkentine), Peter Capell (The Tinker), Werner Heyking (Mr. Jopeck), Peter Stuart (Winkelmann), Dora Altmann (Grandma Georgina), Rudy Borgstaller (Oompa Loompa), Pat Coombs (Henrietta Salt), Gloria Manon (Mrs. Curtis), Ernst Zielgler (Grandpa George), and many others. Mel Stuart directed.
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005) is the second film adaptation of the book. It stars Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket. Tim Burton directed and intended his film to be a slightly modernized and closely adapted version of Roald Dahl's book, not a remake of the first film. Some critics complain that Depp's interpretation is an imitation of Michael Jackson or Jim Carrey. It's a great film, except Depp is mis-cast and ruins everything. He plays a repellent neo-hippie crackpot with zero charisma. Depp's Willy Wonka is an eccentric, perverse rich gay hippie with no appeal. At one point Depp says, "Let's boogie" and it is embarassingly bad because he is too stiff and prissy to ever do such a thing. Mike Myers or Jim Carrey would have made this a wonderful movie, but Depp is a complete disaster, absolutely dreadful. Interestingly, most of the Oompa Loompas are played by Rusty Goffe using digital technology to create replicas. There is an ongoing debate about which film is more faithful to the book, as both make changes to the source. Burton's version was initially better received than Stuart's, grossing over $400 million with a budget of $150 million, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Costume Design.
