Ebert gives Charlie and the Chocolate Factory three stars. What’s remarkable, though, is that he says the movie succeeds in spite of Johnny Depp’s performance. That’s one you don’t hear every day. Ebert also makes the Micheal Jackson connection (not to mention a weird Carol Burnett reference). Anyway, as most of my worries about the film had to do with Depp’s performance in the trailers, it looks like if I can manage to ignore him the rest will be pretty fun. And I can live with that.
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“But leaving ‘Pirates’ aside, can anyone look at Willy Wonka and not think of Michael Jackson?”
Um, yes. But perhaps that’s because I don’t spend all that much time thinking about Michael Jackson. I was getting more of a Adam-West-era Batman-villain vibe from Depp’s Wonka (or, as Depp himself pointed out, the vaguely creepy local weatherman who runs the cartoon show in everyone’s home town on weekends.)
See, I don’t get the creepy weatherman thing. Not because it’s not part of his portrayal – I wouldn’t know; I’ve been knee-deep in Pottermania for the past 24 hours – but because we never had “that guy” in northeastern Indiana. Our local cartoon show was Happy’s Place with a clown. Every time I read Depp’s quote about the weatherman, all I can think of is Captain Kangaroo, and the Captain was great!
But regardless, I still don’t think any of the interpretations mentioned are true to the characterization in the book. I don’t find Wonka creepy AT ALL in the text. So I just don’t see where they’re getting that. And everybody talks as if he just murdered the other four kids… Did nobody read the last ten pages? It drives me nuts.