CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Director: Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmoor, David Kelly

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have “re-imagined” the almost classic children’s tale of Willy Wonka into a more psychologically grounded, albeit less fantastic voyage. Oh yes, there are bigger sights, and louder sounds, but much less whimsy in this version of the magical chocolate factory. Nonetheless, it is a fine little film taken in its own right – although it is difficult to take remakes “in their own right”, and perhaps rather pointless to do so. Johnny Depp got a lot of bad press for his Michael Jackson-esque portrayal of the childlike, yet creepy, Willy Wonka. I thought his role, while not a standout, was perfectly legitimate given the tone of this film. I will admit, however, that he was at the heart of the lack-of-heart in this film. Depp was creepy and weird as Wonka, but he was also entirely unlovable. Gene Wilder beat him by leaps and bounds on that score. A solid movie, but if you’re going to buy a Wonka DVD for your kids, you damn well better be buying the Gene Wilder original.

Standouts: Tim Burton’s unique direction. Freddie Highmoor as Charlie Bucket.
Blowouts: Johnny Depp – not necessarily bad, just weird.

Grade: B

7/23/2005

RENT

Director: Chris Columbus (Harry Potter I & II, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire)
Staring: Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson, Jessie Martin, and more.

I am no expert on musicals. I’ve probably seen less than a dozen live, and this was my first introduction to this particular one. From what I have seen however, I think I understand some of the difficulties in bringing a musical to the big screen. There is an exaggerated earnestness and sincerity in the live theater that is rarely captured on screen (short of The Wizard of Oz or Singing in the Rain that is). It’s hard not to appreciate these things in the theater environment. On screen though, the camera often magnifies the grand gestures required in a large theater (whether figurative or the actual physical movements needed in a large space). There is no doubt that this is one of the most sincere, most earnest stories I’ve seen in some time. That by itself is worth quite a lot I think.

Rent is the story of a group of young Bohemians in New York’s east village in the 80s weathering the effect of AIDS on their free-living, free-loving lifestyle. There are characters overcoming drugs, overcoming AIDS, and loving their fellow man in an orgy of grand (if immature) emotion. These characters have only a short space to live. They are “renting” their lives and their love. That’s quite good.

Musically I didn’t find a lot I loved here. Most of the songs were perfectly good, but there isn’t much chance I’ll end up singing any of these in the shower. At one point I even wondered if the songwriter was simply going through the various preset beats on a Casio keyboard for each song. There was a tango, and a samba, and a, well you get the point.

My main complaint with this film lies with the director, Chris Columbus. This was an extremely ordinary bit of direction I think. To compare it with the musical film Chicago, this was almost an embarrassment visually and stylistically. I’ve never seen a musical yet that didn’t entirely inhabit a fantasyland. Rob Marshall, the director of Chicago, created a wonderful visual fantasyland where the actors could make their grand, earnest gestures in wonderful Broadway style. In this film, everything was rather ho-hum. It was almost a little silly seeing the actors behave theatrically on some average dirty New York street corner.

So I have mixed feelings on this film. Parts were certainly worthy. I can certainly recommend that the musical should be seen, although I imagine it would (and has) worked much better on stage than on the screen. At the same time, I was not particularly impressed by the construction of this film version of that story.

Standouts: Tony award winning, engagingly sincere bit of theater shown on the screen.
Blowouts: Entirely ho-hum direction.

Grade: C+

12/16/2005

TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE

Director: Tim Burton(Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow)
Starring: Voices of Johnny Depp, Emily Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Tracy Ullman, Albert Finney)

First off please allow me to complain about the title of this film, would you? I don’t like having Tim Burton’s name in the freaking title. Get over yourself Timmy and sell some damn tickets without using a horrible title. Believe me, anyone who knows anything about Tim Burton and The Nightmare Before Christmas knows enough about this flick to decide whether to buy a ticket or not.

Whew. Sorry. I had a Bill O'Reilley/terrible twos moment there. I apologize.

Okay, now to the movie itself. I’ll begin by saying that I was a huge fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I thought it was an enormous success creatively, visually, stylistically and even musically. I loved Halloweentown and all the characters that lived in it. Alas, I love neither the drab no name town, nor the brighter and cheerier land of death in this similar claymation film. Burton has gone to these places before. Beetlejuice was pointedly about the exciting and fun afterlife, and I won’t bother to count the number of times he’s shown the everyday ho-hum world in a gray palette, whether figuratively or visually. There’s nothing wrong with these ideas. It’s a fine notion to paint the imagination of death as fantastical and alluring, but I don’t think that he did a particularly good job this time round.

Death, I say? Yes, that’s the fantasyland of this film. Johnny Depp is the voice of a sweet, soft, quiet boy matched by his parents for marriage to a sweet, soft, quiet girl with wicked parents. It’s a perfect match as a wedding, but alas, Johnny accidentally puts the wedding ring onto the outstretched finger of a corpse (while practicing his vows) and ends up betrothed to a dead woman. I won’t go into too many details here, although that is where the joy of this film lives, in the little singing black widows and the like.

The new couple head briefly to “Deadville”, or whatever the town of the dead is called. Of course, all must eventually be worked out. Johnny must find his living bride, and the corpse bride must get retribution from the baddie who killed her on her original wedding day. Fear not, they all do just that.

I have many complaints about the film, but I should note that it’s by no means an awful production. Much was fine, and parts did work. I simply found that for a number of reasons, the film didn’t come together anywhere nearly as well as The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s disappointing to me as I think this film could have been quite good. I won’t go into too much depth on the problems except to say that the music, acting and script were rather weak. I feel that each of these had the roots to be quite good, but that nothing grew out of it. The music was usually quite mundane, the script felt very rushed to me, and I rarely felt that the characters ever got “fleshed out” so to speak, whether they were living or dead. I liked the job Emily Watson and Helena Carter did, but I don’t think the script gave them much of a chance to really create characters. To probably mangle a phrase I attribute to Robert Evans, “If it’s not on the page, it won’t be on the screen”.

This was an average film that at its heart was quite creative, and could have been much more. A disappointment.

Standouts: Aspects of the art design and visuals were interesting, and at its heart this was a very creative story.
Blowouts: Script, music and some acting was “thin”.

Grade: C+

12/14/2005