A hot, sticky summer evening to be spent in an air conditioned, luxury movie theater, watching a fine director and a fine actor remaking a beloved children's film. What could be better?
Plenty. But I'm the Five Paragraph Bitter Film Critic.
Don't get me wrong, the movie's great. Director Tim Burton's imagry of the Wonderful World of Wonka is great. Freddie Highmore is a good little actor, and he stood up quite well as the earnest Charlie. Johnny Depp plays the role of Willy Wonka with a certain foppish, yet bitter, family-hating delight. The casting of Count Dooku as Willy's estranged dad is a lovely touch. And the Oopma-Loompa is played by a dude named Deep Roy, the best porn name for a non-porn star since Britney Spears.
Some of the scenes look like they were clearly inspired by the original 1970s film, and others look like their straight from the book. Some of the special effects are quite dazzling, especially the art deco-meets-Le Courbousier chocolate factory. The kids look a lot like the kids from the original, yet they have a more modern twist, like the violent video game lovin' Mike Teevee and uber-competitive Violet Beauregard.
What could be better is Muvico 24 at Arundel Mills. State of the art projection and sound system that is apparently run on Windows 98, first edition. Have you ever seen a movie reboot before? I have now - six times in this fim alone - and I now can safely say I'll take good old-fashioned film projector over a movie being shown over the same PC that some 17 year-old kid is doing a search for pictures of "Deep Roy."
--------- 3 1/2 out of 5 Whammies for the movie ---------
------ ZIPPY out 100 Whammies for the projector --------
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