Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tim Burton
Produced by	Brad Grey Richard D. Zanuck
Written by	Novel Roald Dahl Screenplay John August
Narrated by	Geoffrey Holder
Starring	Freddie Highmore Johnny Depp David Kelly Helena Bonham Carter Noah Taylor Missi Pyle James Fox Jordan Fry Deep Roy Christopher Lee AnnaSophia Robb Liz Smith David Morris Eileen Essell
Music by	Danny Elfman
Cinematography	Philippe Rousselot
Editing by	Chris Lebenzon
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	France July 13, 2005 United States July 15, 2005 United Kingdom July 29, 2005
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$150 million[1]
Gross revenue	$474,968,763[1]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 2005 fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. Based on the 1964 Roald Dahl children's novel of the same name, the film also stars Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket and is the second film adaptation of the book. It is also the second film based on a Roald Dahl novel worked on by Tim Burton after producing James and the Giant Peach. It became a box office success and received positive critical reaction, receiving an Academy Award nomination at the 78th Academy Awards for Best Costume Design. The film was released in North America on July 15, 2005 by Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Music 4 Reception 4.1 Release 4.2 Critical reception 5 Awards and nominations 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Plot

In a chocolate factory, Willy Wonka places five golden sheets randomly among hundreds of thousands of Wonka Bars on a conveyor belt, which are then boxed and shipped across the world. Near the factory, Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) lives in a small, dilapidated house with his parents and four grandparents. Mr. Bucket (Noah Taylor) provides the only family income by screwing caps on toothpaste tubes at a nearby plant, and family meals consist only of watered-down cabbage soup.

Charlie has long been enthralled with Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) and his chocolate, so much that he has built a scale replica of his factory entirely out of defective toothpaste caps sneaked home by Mr. Bucket. Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) tells Charlie about the time he worked for Wonka, and how Wonka was commissioned by an Indian prince named Prince Pondicherry to build a palace entirely out of chocolate, which promptly melted in the boiling sun after he ignored Wonka's advice to eat it. Plans to rebuild it were curtailed, however, due to problems concerning spies amid Wonka's staff, who stole his secret recipes and sold them to rival candymakers. As a result, Wonka fires all of his workers and shuts down the factory, which later inexplicably reopens despite no new employees being hired.

The next day, Charlie hears about a contest on television: five Golden Tickets have been placed in five random Wonka Bars worldwide, and the winners will be given a full tour of the factory as well as a lifetime supply of chocolate, while one ticketholder will be given a special prize at the end of the tour. Wonka's sales subsequently skyrocket, which causes a rise in cavities and boosts toothpaste sales. With the upswing in profits, the toothpaste factory decides to automate and replaces its workers (including Mr. Bucket) with faster-working machines.

The first four tickets are found fairly quickly. The recipients are Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), a very spoiled English girl; Violet Beauregarde (AnnaSophia Robb), a competitive gum chewer, and Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), an arrogant television and video game addict. The bar Charlie gets for his birthday does not contain a ticket, and Grandpa Joe secretly gives Charlie a silver dollar for a second bar, which also comes up empty. After overhearing that the final ticket was found in Russia, Charlie finds a ten-dollar note half-buried in the snow while on his way home, and he purchases a Wonka Bar at a news shop. At the exact moment it was revealed that the Russian ticket was forged, Charlie discovers the real fifth ticket inside the wrapper. After the euphoria dies down, he tells his family that he had received an offer of $500 for the ticket and that the money was more important. Grandpa George rebuffs Charlie by telling him that money is commonplace but there are only five Golden Tickets in the world.

Charlie and the other ticket holders are greeted by an automated puppet show that sings "The Wonka Welcome Song" and presents an unoccupied throne; fireworks then set the puppets alight and cause them to melt and break down. Wonka first appears as having mingled into the group to watch the show as well. During the tour, each of the bad children disobey Wonka's orders after being tempted by something related to their individual character flaws, and suffer various consequences: Augustus is sucked up a chocolate extraction pipe after falling into a chocolate river from which he was drinking, Violet is turned into an oversized blueberry after chewing unstable three-course-meal gum, Veruca is pushed into a garbage chute by worker squirrels after she tries to take one as a pet, and Mike is shrunk with a teleporter that he uses on himself. The Oompa-Loompas (Deep Roy) sing a song of morality after each elimination. The children leave the factory with an exaggerated characteristic or deformity related to their demise-Augustus becomes covered in chocolate; Violet becomes violet colored; Mike is overstretched; Veruca is merely covered in garbage.

Wonka then invites Charlie to come live and work in the factory with him, and reveals that the purpose of the Golden Tickets and the tour was to make the "least rotten" child the heir of his factory. The only catch is that Charlie must leave his family behind, because Wonka believes family is a hindrance while a chocolatier needed creative freedom. A subplot told in flashbacks involves Wonka's dentist father, Dr. Wilbur Wonka (Christopher Lee), denying his son candy because of the potential risk to his teeth. After sneaking a leftover piece of chocolate from the fireplace (which Dr. Wonka had previously used to burn all his Halloween candy), he was instantly hooked and ran away from home to follow his dreams of becoming a chocolatier, which later became successful.

As his family is the most important thing in his life, Charlie refuses Wonka's offer. His family is living contently a while later, as his father gets a new job at the factory maintaining the machine that had originally replaced him. However, Wonka is too depressed to make candy the way he used to, and turns to Charlie for advice. Charlie decides to help Wonka confront and reconcile with his estranged father; Wonka finally realizes the value of family, while his father learns to accept his son for who he is, and not what he does. In the end, Charlie has the chocolate factory, and Wonka has patched up with his family.

[edit] Cast

• Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, the highly imaginative but disturbing and antisocial chocolatier who invites five children to a tour of his factory. Throughout the film, he has flashbacks recalling his damaged relationship with his dentist father. During these flashbacks, he is played by Blair Dunlop.
• Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, a soft-spoken and optimistic child who lives in poverty with his parents and two sets of grandparents, who share the same bed. He idolizes Willy Wonka and his factory enough to create an elaborate model of both made entirely out of deformed toothpaste caps. Despite Wonka's offer to have Charlie abandon his family in favor of becoming Wonka's heir, Charlie declines out of his love for his own family, but later accepts when Wonka changes the offer in allowing them to come.
• David Kelly as Grandpa Joe, Charlie's lively grandfather. He once worked for Wonka in his small corner store, and now accompanies Charlie in his tour of the factory.
• Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Bucket, the mother of Charlie Bucket. Because of the Buckets' financial situation, she can only afford to use cabbage to make all of her family's meals.
• Noah Taylor as Mr. Bucket, the father of Charlie Bucket. He works for the Smilex Toothpaste factory until he is laid off to make way for a new machine.
• Missi Pyle as Mrs. Scarlett Beauregarde, the mother of Violet and her chaperone during the tour of the factory.
• James Fox as Mr. Salt, Veruca's father and chaperone during the tour of the factory who runs a profitable nut business.
• Deep Roy as the Oompa-Loompas, a cocoa bean-loving people from Loompaland who agree to work in Wonka's factory in exchange for all the cocoa beans they could ever want. All the Oompa Loompas except one (see Geoffrey Holder) were voiced by film composer Danny Elfman.
• Christopher Lee as Dr. Wilbur Wonka, Willy's dentist father, who forbids his son from consuming candy.
• Adam Godley as Mr. Teavee, Mike's father and chaperone during the tour of the factory. He is also a high-school geography teacher, which is annouced in a scene of the film.
• Franziska Troegner as Mrs. Gloop, Augustus' mother and chaperone during the tour of the factory.
• AnnaSophia Robb as Violet Beauregarde, an American competitive and self-centered girl who has an obsession with bubble gum.
• Julia Winter as Veruca Salt, an English child, spoiled by her rich parents.
• Jordan Fry as Mike Teavee, a brash, arrogant and hyperactive, but gifted, child who is addicted to television and video games, but who hates chocolate. He used a very complex mathematical formula which resulted in his being required to buy only one Wonka bar to win his Golden Ticket.^{[citation needed]}
• Philip Wiegratz as Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous and extremely greedy German child who is always seen eating something.
• Liz Smith as Grandma Georgina, a senile grandparent of Charlie.
• Eileen Essell as Grandma Josephine, another of Charlie's grandparents.
• David Morris as Grandpa George, a pessimistic grandparent of Charlie who doesn't believe Charlie will go to the factory.
• Geoffrey Holder as the Narrator, who is revealed to be an Oompa-Loompa at the end of the film.

[edit] Production

Warner Bros. bought the rights to a film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1999, with Gary Ross attached to direct and Scott Frank writing. Ross left in 2001, and Rob Minkoff, Robert Zemeckis, Barry Levinson and Martin Scorsese were considered for directing, or attached to the project, while Gwyn Lurie began rewriting the script in February 2002.^[2] On May 26, 2003, Tim Burton was hired to direct,^[2] and was annoyed by the previous drafts which portrayed Wonka as a father figure to Charlie Bucket.^[3] He commissioned Pamela Pettler and then John August, with whom he had worked on Corpse Bride and Big Fish respectively, to pen new drafts to his satisfaction.^[2]

In 2003, Highmore was cast in the role as Charlie Bucket at the same time Depp was cast as Willy Wonka. The two had previously acted together in Finding Neverland, and Depp liked working with Highmore so much that he recommended the young actor be chosen to portray Charlie. According to Burton, Depp modeled the character's hair on Anna Wintour.^[4] Filming completed in late 2004.

[edit] Music

The original music score was written by Danny Elfman, a frequent collaborator with director Tim Burton. Elfman's score is based around three primary themes: a gentle family theme for the Buckets, generally set in upper woodwinds; a mystical, string-driven waltz for Willy Wonka; and a hyper-upbeat factory theme for full orchestra, Elfman's homemade synthesizer samples and the diminutive chanting voices of the Oompa-Loompas.

Elfman also wrote and performed the vocals for four songs. The lyrics to the Oompa-Loompa songs are adapted from the original book, and are thus credited to Roald Dahl. Each song in the score is designed to reflect a different archetype. "Wonka's Welcome Song" is a maddeningly cheerful theme park ditty, "Augustus Gloop" a Bollywood spectacle (per Deep Roy's suggestion); "Violet Beauregarde" is 1970s funk, "Veruca Salt" is 1960s bubble-gum pop / psychedelia; and "Mike Teavee" is a tribute to late 1970s British pop (such as Queen) / early 1980s hair bands.

The original motion picture soundtrack was released on July 12, 2005 on Warner Home Video Records. The following songs appear on the album:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Film score by Danny Elfman
Released	June 12, 2005
Label	Warner Bros.
Producer	Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman chronology
Spider-Man (2002) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) Corpse Bride (2006)

1. "Wonka's Welcome Song"
2. "Augustus Gloop"
3. "Violet Beauregarde"
4. "Veruca Salt"
5. "Mike Teavee"
6. "Main Titles"
7. "Wonka's First Shop"
8. "The Indian Palace"
9. "Wheels in Motion"
10. "Charlie's Birthday Bar"
11. "The Golden Ticket/Factory"
12. "Chocolate Explorers"
13. "Loompa Land"
14. "The Boat Arrives"
15. "The River Cruise"
16. "First Candy"
17. "Up and Out"
18. "The River Cruise - Part 2"
19. "Charlie Declines"
20. "Finale"
21. "End Credit Suite"

[edit] Reception

[edit] Release

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was released in the United States on July 15, 2005.^[1] In its opening weekend it earned $56,178,450 at the North American box office and went on to gross $475 million in worldwide box office receipts.^[1] The film was released to DVD and VHS on November 8, 2005. In the United States, a single-disc edition and a two-disc deluxe edition were released.

[edit] Critical reception

Critical reaction to the film has been generally positive. The average was 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes,^[5] and earned a score of 73 from Metacritic.^[6] Nonetheless, its score on Rotten Tomatoes is lower than the 1971 version. David Stratton of At the Movies rated it as "infinitely better" than the older movie.^[7] Famed critic Roger Ebert, however, gave it three out of four stars, lower than the four star rating that he gave the original. He stated that the film was hindered by Johnny Depp's portrayal of a darker Willy Wonka.^[8]

Gene Wilder, who played Willy Wonka in the 1971 film, initially opposed this version, stating it "is all about money. It's just some people sitting around thinking 'How can we make some more money?' Why else would you remake Willy Wonka?"^[9] There was some criticism of racism, colonialism, slavery, and group stereotyping similar to those received by the original 1964 book, in which the Oompa-Loompas were described as dark-skinned pygmies from the African jungle.^[10][11]

[edit] Awards and nominations

• 2006 Academy Awards: Best Costume Design (nominated, lost to Memoirs of a Geisha)
• 2006 Kids' Choice Awards: Favorite Movie (nominated, lost to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and Favorite Movie Actor (nominated, lost to Hitch)
• 2006 Teen Choice Awards: Choice Actor - Comedy (won)
• 2005 golden globes Best actor musical or comedy

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

• Official website
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Allmovie
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Internet Movie Database
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Rotten Tomatoes
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Box Office Mojo
• Detailed Comparison between Theatrical Cut and HD-DVD
• "Did I ever watch the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?", Review

Preceded by Fantastic Four	Box office number-one films of 2005 (USA) July 17 - July 24	Succeeded by Wedding Crashers
	Box office number-one films of 2005 (UK) July 31 - August 21	Succeeded by The Dukes of Hazzard

v • d • e Tim Burton 1980s Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) · Beetlejuice (1988) · Batman (1989) 1990s Edward Scissorhands (1990) · Batman Returns (1992) · Ed Wood (1994) · Mars Attacks! (1996) · Sleepy Hollow (1999) 2000s Planet of the Apes (2001) · Big Fish (2003) · Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) · Corpse Bride (2005) · Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) 2010s Alice in Wonderland (2010) Productions The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) · Cabin Boy (1994) · Batman Forever (1995) · James and the Giant Peach (1996) · The World of Stainboy (2000) · 9 (2009) Short films The Island of Doctor Agor (1971) · Stalk of the Celery (1979) · Vincent (1982) · Frankenweenie (1984)

v • d • e Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Characters Willy Wonka • Oompa-Loompas • Charlie Bucket • Augustus Gloop • Veruca Salt • Violet Beauregarde • Mike Teavee • Grandpa Joe • Mr. Slugworth • Prince Pondicherry • Mr. Salt • Mr. Beauregarde • Mrs. Beauregarde Novels Charlie and the Chocolate Factory • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Films Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) Music Leslie Bricusse • Anthony Newley • Walter Scharf • Danny Elfman • The Candy Man • (I've Got a) Golden Ticket • Pure Imagination • The Rowing Song Miscellaneous Golden Ticket • Wonka Bar • Video Game • Theme park ride