So, I've finally watched "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and it's far better than I expected. I've never liked "The Candy Man" song from the Gene Wilder version, that movie was just sort of like saccarine Tab--sort of artificially sweet with a bad after-taste, and an inescapable '70s sort of cheesiness. I didn't really see the need for a new one, as the old one was still available for those who wanted it. Not that I thought anyone really did want it.
The kidlets were also soured on it--the Bunny loved the older version, and was staunchly against any tampering with it. (So, she's not got infallible taste--we still love her.) Pony had been punished with the "Willie Wonka Welcome Song" earworm--friends and acquaintances sang it, repeatedly, and it was soon inescapable. No one at Chez Evil wanted to see it.
But the times, they are a-changing. Pony is now in 7th grade orchestra, and they are playing selections from the soundtrack and was watching the movie in school. Bunny has mostly forgotten the Gene Wilder movie and has been playing the PS2 game version. I have seen several Johnny Depp films and find him an extremely interesting actor to watch. (Yeah, sure, he's also often veritably dreamy, which never hurts, but as Willie Wonka...not so much). So, I rented the DVD.
It was better than I expected, and much less "off" than I remembered the older one. Depp was about as far from Captain Jack Sparrow as he could be, I loved Deep Roy as the ubiquitous Oompa-Loompas, and the fantastic sets were so purely executed with joy and verve that I immediately understood why Tim Burton was drawn to the story--it was the kind of world by which Tim Burton movies often seem inspired.
So, being the geek that I am, I went to IMDB and read trivia and connections and comments and reviews---and came across Roger Ebert's review in which he compares Depp's Wonka to Michael Jackson. Which, I remembered, I had read when the movie first came out, and which added to my impression of creepiness and my desire to stay away in droves from the film.
But, actually watching the movie, it seems to me that Ebert missed the boat. Johnny Depp might have some superficial resemblance to Michael Jackson, but not so much that when I watched the movie I thought of the "King of Pop." Depp's Wonka has no interest in children, and would avoid them entirely if he could. He does not keep pets--unlike Michael Jackson's pet rat and monkey and other zoo animal pets, Wonka keeps squirrels only because they can remove walnuts whole from the shells. Wonka's animals have jobs and responsibilities and probably even hourly quotas and union breaks.
It's the voice, though, that I really couldn't place. Michael Jackson has a distinctive breathy voice, best captured in the line from the "Thriller" video: "I'm not like other guys." (No shit, Sherlock!) There is just such a little-boy-lost/Marilyn Monroe quality to his voice that is so inseparable from the creepiness that is Michael Jackson that to remove the voice is to remove the likeness.
And Johnny Depp does not speak in a breathless voice in "Wonka." He has a fairly flat affect, actually, and a little chirpiness, accentuated by the slightly higher pitch he adopts. It's got the immaturity of a boy's voice before it changes, which suggests the perpetual pre-adolescence Willy Wonka has built for himself.
But there was something else that I just couldn't place. Something about the cadence of his line reading, the way he refused to speak any of the children's names. He called them "little boy" and "little girl" as if those were, in fact, the children's names. He spoke in the royal third person with that odd nearly cheerful inflection that recalled....recalled...
Church Lady.
I would have gotten it much faster if one of the winners of the Golden Ticket had been ...
SATAN!!!!
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