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Willy Wonka & The Chocolate
Factory (1971)
In director Mel Stuart's unlikely scary children's
film adaptation of Roald Dahl's bizarre fairy tale - remade by Tim
Burton as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), starring
Johnny Depp as the famed chocolatier:
- the memorable rendition of "The Candy Man" by
Aubrey Woods ("Who can take a sunrise? Sprinkle it with dew.
Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two. The Candy Man! The
Candy Man can!")
- the thrilling moment when poor boy Charlie Bucket
(Peter Ostrum in his only film role) found money in a gutter, bought
two candy bars, and discovered the last remaining Golden Ticket inside
one of them; he celebrated with Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) in the
triumphant and spritely song/dance "I've Got a Golden Ticket"
- the introduction of the character of the sweet but
slightly wicked, reclusive candy man Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder in
a definitive role) and his chocolate factory in a fanciful land populated
by orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa-Loompas workers who often sang
moralistic songs
- the factory tour given for the lucky, mostly bratty
children (and the musical number "Pure Imagination" performed
by Willy) with Willy's insight: "Invention, my dear friends,
is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch
ripple"
- the sight of all the sweets - marshmallow mushrooms,
candy umbrellas, and other sweets
- the scene in which tormenting, purple-clad Willy
offered a boat ride down the Chocolate River to the kids and their
parents - while hallucinatory, colorful, hellish and surreal images
(a kaleidoscope of insects, a beheading of a chicken, a slimy worm
on a face, etc.) were back-projected behind them while Willy provided
strange commentary and sang the darkly morbid, strange, foreboding
song Wondrous Boat Ride (pictured) on the chocolate river
- the fates of the "naughty" children - highlighted
by Violet (Denise Nickerson) being transformed into a giant blueberry
(!)
- the crowd-pleasing finale in which Willy Wonka made
Charlie his heir ("Charlie, don't forget what happened to the
man who suddenly got everything he always wanted...He lived happily
ever after!")
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