Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
(1971)

Oompa, loompa, doompity doo, I've got a puzzling question for you:

Why in the blue blazes is Willy Wonka not recognized as one of the best family films of all time?!

Sure, I know, I know. The very premise is patently offensive to the politically-correct soccer parent crowd out there. Five children are invited into the factory of the world-famous but very reclusive maker of candies, Willy Wonka. Four of them have evident character flaws and succumb to the many brightly-colored, candy-coated temptations within Wonka's fantastic factory, and they suffer horrible (but very humorous) fates.

Now, if you're trying to protect Kaitlyn and Dylan from even hearing about the horrible crazy candy-manufacturers in the world, or from stories in which bad children who disobey the rules might actually suffer consequences instead of simply sing a "sorry song," then forget about this film. It's way too much fun for the likes of you.

But if you want a zany and intelligent family film, that will leave you laughing and smiling all day long, then this is the picture for you.

Wonka is an imp. I'm sorry, he is just an imp. The inventor of Everlasting Gobstoppers, the Scrumdiddlyumptious Bar, and Fizzy-Lifting Drinks is terrific. And Gene Wilder as the Wonkster is just a delight to watch. His life has been full of pain, and his career has had as many lows as highs, but the energy and madness he brings to the title character in this film is simply magical.

The child actors are all quite talented, and never quite get on your nerves like in many other films of this sort. Character actor Jack Albertson is very pleasant in the role of Grandpa Joe, and the songs by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley are good listening and don't drag down the pace of the film. (Well, except for maybe Cheer Up, Charlie. But the songs The Candy Man and Pure Imagination are this film's most enduring legacy.)

Now, there are scenes of chaos and kids running wild and there's lots of sugar and candy and scenes intended to go over the heads of the tiny tots. This kind of stuff is usually considered distasteful nowadays, but I am all for it. If our children can't watch a film in which there is misbehaving and a little havoc once in a little while, then DEMOCRACY AS WE KNOW IT will fall.

After the film, there will be information about the literary legacy behind the story, and some interesting trivia about the film itself.

Charlie Bucket is poor. I'm not just talking about poor in the respect of not being able to be a economical-political world power, I'm talking about poor on a Dickenseque scale. So poor that he can never have new clothes or snow boots or toys or games or any of the other things that children love. Worst of all, so poor that he can never ever have CHOCOLATE.

Since his family is so poor they can't even eat regularly, all of these things are out of the question, and he must work hard delivering newspapers and running odd errands so he can chip in and buy things that they all need.

Below you can see just how poor the Bucket family is. They can only afford one bed, and the four elderly folks (Charlie's grandparents) hog it all of the time. What's worse, these elderly four have not been out of their bed for twenty years. This is one of the parts of the story that it's better not to think much about.

(I hate to break the mood, but given that this is, at heart, a morality play, what do you think will happen to the young, poor, virtuous Charlie and his loving family? Anyone have any suggestions?)

(PC soccer parent sezs: Films with children in them should only take place in enchanted forests, or similar magic lands, where nobody is poor. That way children can realize that the story is fiction and lose interest in it.)

But a ray of light enters the Bucket's home when Willy Wonka, a famed confectioner who has lived a secluded life for years in his mysterious factory, holds a fabulous world-wide contest. Who ever finds one of five Golden Tickets hidden inside Wonka's candies, gets a free lifetime supply of chocolates and a tour of the Wonka factory itself.

The allure of an unlimited supply of chocolate (forever and ever, hallelujah, amen!) is pretty danged strong, as we soon see montages of people rushing to buy Wonka candies, paying extravagant amounts for boxes of candies at auction, visiting psychiatrists about their visions of Wonka candies (no I didn't just make that up,) and so on. Below you see a man attempting to locate a Golden Ticket using a computer. This film was made back in the days when computers still took up most of a room, had to be constantly refrigerated, and had computing power roughly equivalent to the wafer-thin solar-cell pocket calculators you can buy at any convenience store for less than a dollar. Only without the LCD display.

(Just imagine how many Wonka's Golden Tickets you could find on your Pentium 4 2.2 GHz workstations today! The poor guy would go totally out of business! Too bad he's fictional.)

Charlie's family scrimps and saves to buy him a few chocolate bars, knowing that the boy dreams about winning the contest, but they do not find a Golden Ticket. Meanwhile, news starts coming in about the winners, and little Charlie's hopes diminish with each new announcement. But enough of this, let's meet our Golden Ticket winners:

Winner #1: Augustus Gloop

This is the little (?) child Augustus, who never ever ever has an empty mouth. He loves and loves to eat. You see, this film is not very big on deep characterization. Augustus really just likes to eat - even overeat. That is the character flaw that we will see lead to his eventual destruction at the hands of Wonka (ahem....)

Winner #2: Veruca Salt

Veruca is a little English girl who is about as spoiled by her rich mommy and daddy as she can be. Whatever she wants, she'll get somehow, including one of Wonka's Golden Tickets. And no matter how much she gets, she's never ever satisfied with what she has.

Think of a combination of Veronica (from Archie Comics) and Lucy Van Pelt (from Peanuts) and you've pegged the little loud-mouthed character exactly.

Winner #3: Violet Beauregard

Violet Beauregard has a ten-pack-a-day habit. No, I'm not talking about cigarettes, I'm talking about chewing gum. She chews gum all of the time - while she's speaking, while she's eating, while she's sleeping! She probably swallows it too, and you know that stuff takes years to digest.

Winner #4: Mike Teavee

BANG! You're dead! Mike Teavee watches television. All the time. See a pattern? He's never away from it. As a matter of fact, his surname rather oddly reflects that fact. Perhaps that's what he asked for Christmas - a new last name. Given that his mother is a smarmy know-it-all schoolteacher (who tends to get facts wrong,) and his father doesn't want to buy him a real gun (until he's 12, at least,) I wouldn't blame him. (Har har - that was A FUNY.)

(PC soccer parent sezs: Children should never, ever fantasize about owning a gun! And shame on Mr. Teavee for agreeing to buy one for the kid at only twelve! Even if it's a joke! But television is really great for the little sprouts. It helps them grow. It keeps them quiet.)

Winner #5: Charlie Bucket

Well, how about that. Little Charlie beat the odds. Who woulda thunk it? Well, at least that whole sub-plot is going somewhere. So Charlie, poor Charlie, is going to get his dream this time. (Do not think about the hundreds of millions of poor children as virtuous as Master Bucket who did not get a Golden Ticket. Do not I say!)

Most Wanted Loser #1: Arthur Slugworth

But wait a minute! Who is this figure stepping out of the shadows to confront little Charlie? Well, first, it's about two years worth of nightmares for the kids in the audience. I mean, look at that face. It just screams "scary maniacal bad guy." Second, it's none other than Arthur Slugworth, president of a chocolate company competing with Wonka! This evil Woodrow Wilson lookalike bribes Charlie to deliver a top-secret candy to him (the "Everlasting Gobstopper") so he can discover Wonka's secret formula and beat him to the market. Wow! Industrial Espionage! Suddenly, this story has become so much more adult in scope! (Or something.)

The big day arrives, and the children arrive with their escorts (one each. Charlie has picked his Grandpa Joe.) Willy Wonka comes out, greets the crowd, and brings the group into his factory for the tour. You should know something about Wonka - he's utterly mad. Totally cuckoo. A crazy genius has just pulled five children and their guardians into a realm where they are about to become helpless. At the Wonka factory, nobody goes in and nobody goes out, so we we're told. They are all at the whim of Willy Wonka. And for everyone involved, their lives will change forever.

Also, please notice Wonka's very neat hair in the picture above. It gets gradually more wild and frizzled as the film progresses, and by the end, it's almost as free and mad as the brains under it.

Now, before I go on, I should point out some delicious irony! This movie actually has a PC soccer parent in it, as a character! And guess what? We're supposed to dislike her! And she's a schoolteacher as well. I sure wish kid's films today could poke fun at authority without every parents' and teachers' group making a huge fuss. Mrs. Teavee, above, is a professed know-it-all who holds Wonka and everything he stands for (namely... fun, and CHOCOLATE), with disdain. She may be an authority figure on the outside of the factory, but, once inside Wonka's lair, she actually has no real authority and is as helpless as any of the children. That not only makes for good wholesome entertainment, but it has an important lesson for the kiddies ("Teacher is not always right," and "Authority figures are human beings like you," just for starters. So many adults, even, don't seem to understand this.)

But, anyway. This is our first realm of temptations - the Chocolate Room. Tantalizingly titled, you see that it prominently features a vast river full of liquid CHOCOLATE. Numerous sugared delights are strewn carelessly about the place. You see, it is like a candied Garden of Eden, full of happiness and fantasy. The only thing that Wonka indicates is off-limits is the chocolate river.

It's only a matter of time before somebody falls out of grace. And that somebody, sure enough, is little (?) Augustus. The others are eating freely of the other candies and sweets all around the room, but he's leaning over the chocolate river, scooping as much of the brown stuff in as he can. This could only spell trouble....

On the other side of the river are Wonka's workers, the "Oompa-Loompas". The "Oompa-Loompas" are little people who glow radioactive orange and have green hair. Think of what would happen if you cloned the members of the Lollipop Guild from the Wizard of Oz during the Chernobyl accident, and forced them to mix a river of chocolate. Ok, that's about right, including the fact that they sing, whenever and whatever they're doing.

Some people have criticized the film's use of the Oompa-Loompas, saying that they're too scary for the little ones. Peh, considering all of the other stuff that's already in this movie, it really doesn't matter, I say.

Aha, this is the penality you must pay for disobeying the orders of Willy Wonka. Soon enough, little (?) Augustus has fallen into the river and is sucked into one of its many pipes. Due to his rotundity, he gets stuck momentarily, but soon he shoots up like a cannon, to who-knows-where.

Willy Wonka and Mrs. Gloop then proceed to have an exchange about the possibility of Augustus being boiled or cut up to make fudge candies. I LOVE THIS MOVIE!

And then the Oompa-Loompas do the best thing ever. They begin to march around and sing a little song, the gist of which is "don't get fat, 'cause little (?) Augustus got exactly what was coming to him." Oh yes. The happy little Oompa-Loompas throughout the movie bounce up and down, march in circles, turn cartwheels and let loose their songs, these little moralistic doom-dirges, mocking the foolishness of the child and/or their parents. This is one of the greatest things ever to appear in a movie. Period.

The distraught and whimpering Mrs. Gloop is shown away by the little orange men. Now there are four children left.

(PC soccer parent sezs: That's it. I'm popping in the Barney tapes.)

Note that, now after one has fallen from grace, all have in the party, and Wonka takes them away from the Chocolate Room and their glorious candy-feasts in a beautiful boat. Doesn't seem so bad, you think? Hah, you don't know Willy Wonka very well, do you? Let's just say that it's quite unpleasant, and that the picture above does not convey a tenth of the delight of this scene. It's also something that's unlikely to ever be duplicated in a Hollywood kids' movie, ever.

They soon arrive at Wonka's Inventing Room, which is full of marvellous machines, pots cooking with strange confections, Oompa-Loompas stirring and working with instruments, and so on.

I should note that Wonka, just before allowing the visitors into his Invention Room, rattles off an introduction in German. I love it when people do things like this in a kiddie movie. I love it. I loved it when I was four, I loved it when I was fourteen, I love it now. Filmmakers, I demand that you never again make a film that talks down to children. They hate it. Expose the kids to some good, engaging stuff, and give them interesting stories. Throw in some stuff that they might not understand, but that they will wonder enough about to look it up. Children love to learn about new things on their own. Especially in this Internet age, geez Louise!

(BTW, the outside scenes in this movie were all filmed around Munich, Germany. It adds some very picturesque storybook European village atmosphere to the film. I should also note that the polyglot Wonka speaks lines in French and Latin elsewhere in the film.)

But you really didn't think that Wonka could go very long without testing the children once more, did you?

Above we see Violet Beauregard holding a piece of prototype gum. It's supposed to be a full three-course meal in a little stick of chewing gum. Violet is, I'm sure, eager to justify or legitimatize her habit by taking up this gum with actual nutritional value, but Wonka warns her not to try it. It's not a completely finished product yet.

But, sure enough, Violet doesn't listen and chews the gum anyway. It seems to work OK until she reaches the third course, the dessert - blueberry pie with cream. She begins to turn dark blue, and before she realizes it, she's changing into a blueberry!

And the doom-dirges start up again. Oompa, loompa, Violet, you suck.

The sad thing, though, is that, really, Violet had the most harmless bad habit of all of the naughty children. Yet, in the book, she winds up permanently disfigured. She never gets the blue out of her skin, while Veruca and her father, for example, simply end up covered in garbage (which can presumably be cleaned off.) One can easily argue that her fault was not gum-chewing, but stealing and chewing the prototype, not-quite-ready gum from Wonka, but that's not the behavior that the producers of the film (and originally, Roald Dahl) originally sought to discourage.

This is where the flaw in these morality-play stories really shows: Augustus, for example, suffers because he disobeyed Wonka's orders not to drink from the chocolate river, but he does not suffer (directly) from the fact of being a glutton. The book and the movie clearly had, as a goal, discouraging children from emulating the behavior of the naughty kids (thus the Oompa-Loompa songs and the constant morality subtext in the book.) Granted, had Augustus not been a glutton, he might not have drank from the chocolate river - but come now, how many children, even ungluttonous children, would refuse to drink from a river full of frothy CHOCOLATE? I know I, as an adult, would be the first one there.

But anyway, there are only three children left. Ticketholders #1 and #2 have already met with a sad fate, while ticketholders #3, #4, and #5 are still unharmed. (and, yes, they do go down in the order in which they won their tickets, thanks for noticing.)

On the way to the next chamber of temptation and transgressions, they stop to lick one of Wonka's new inventions: fruit-flavored lickable wallpaper, for nursery walls. "A strawberry tastes like a strawberry! A snozzberry tastes like a snozzberry!"

(PC soccer parent sezs: Eew! That's unsanitary. This film should not portray children licking walls. Ever. They could get many germs from all the other children who had licked the walls. And snozzberries don't even exist. Children might think that there is actually such a fruit! This is an atrocity, really. If children starting licking the walls in my home, well, I can just think of the nasty goop they'd pick up. I mean, I never have time to clean up my walls at home. I'm always at work or driving Dylan down to his cello lessons or driving Kaitlyn to her soccer games, and whenever I do go home I'm always alone because my spouse works a separate shift and my kids are always away and I just stare at the grime caked on my walls that I never have time to clean and I can never do anything fun because I think just like the schools and the TV and the politicians want me to and.... I hate my life. Please hug me.)

And now, a fun day at Wonka's Chocolate Factory almost turns deadly for Charlie and Grandpa Joe. They break away from the rest of the party and sneak out some of Wonka's Fizzy-Lifting Drinks - which can make you float in the air. They drink these and have a good old time floating around.

When they go too high, they're almost chopped to bits by a whirling fan. Fortunately, they manage to escape in an amusing fashion.

Why Charlie Bucket can get away with this, though, is not explained. Anytime the other children break the rules, they pay dearly for it, and their parents suffer as well. I really don't like the fact that Chuck and his grandpappy - heroes of the story or not - get off pretty much scot-free when they lift the Fizzy-Lifting Drinks. Granted, they did get very frightened by the fan, and could have been killed, but they escaped no problem, and when they rejoined the party, nobody says a word (Wonka mentions his irritation with them for this later, but that's the extent of it.)

I won't worry much about it, though. It is simply one of the inscrutable mysteries of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. And given the already problematic nature of the "morality play" type of story in general, it's worth skipping over. They got the pants almost scared off of them, and that was apparently enough punishment.

If you listen carefully to Charlie Bucket's lines throughout the film, you'll notice that Peter Ostrum's voice was changing during the production. This isn't irritating since it isn't as noticeable as it is in a few other films, and it really only is noticable in a couple of lines, but it is an interesting and human element of the film's backstory. In a case where it's apparent that the voice change could cause some continuity problems, it's usual for the filmmakers to have the boy actor record all of his lines before more shooting occurs, and these recorded lines can be overdubbed in scenes where his voice cracks, or the pitch or loudness is deemed unacceptable or jarring.

But anyway.... where were we? Ah, yes, Veruca Salt. Poor Veruca... eh, rich Veruca, spoiled Veruca.

You see, Wonka now has his victims (Charlie and Gramps, too, they're back) in a room where giant geese are laying golden Easter eggs. These eggs are measured on an "Educated Egg-ucator", which determines their quality, and if they're up to Wonka standards, an Oompa-Loompa polishes them and packages them for sale.

Needless to say, Veruca begins whining about how she wants to buy one of Wonka's geese - and how she wants all of the candies and goodies and everything that there is in the world - and makes the mistake of standing on the "Educated Egg-ucator". Naturally, she's a bad egg, and then it's down the chute with Veruca. No more chocolate for you, young lady!

Mr. Salt dives in after her, in the hopes of rescuing her. Well, nothing left to do but to strike up the doom dirges, and be sure that the Oompa-Loompas are looking down the chute with delight whilst they sing:

Let's face it. There's nothing that could make this an ordinary picture at this point. Heck, it's almost over. Three out of the five children have met their doom, and we know nothing's going to happen to our main man Charlie, so that leaves only Mike Teavee to be rid of. Wonka subjects them to a bath in some sort of foam, which leaves them all screaming and squirming, but doesn't actually destroy them. Hmm. We need something bigger. Something better, that can take care of this last kid once and for all.....

....We've got it! Since Mike loves T.V. so much, why not put him in a T.V. room? With a giant T.V. camera that will miniaturize him if he actually tries to work it! Gee, that's a great idea!

And yep, that's exactly what Willy Wonka does. And sure enough, there's no way at all that Mike could show self-control and resist the temptation to divide himself up into a million pieces.

Above, you see Mike in no fewer than a million tiny pieces, about to be reassembled on the Wonkavision monitor. But of course, even a million tiny pieces can only make up a tiny Mike Teavee:

And all of this thrills the Oompa-Loompas to no end:

Poor Mike, and poor Mrs. Teavee. She was a great PC soccer parent character while it lasted, but that television addiction just did them in.

I really hope that you noticed something. Augustus Gloop fell in a paradisical realm full of candy and wonderment. Violet Beauregard failed in the less wonderful, but still marvelous and very busy Inventing Room. Veruca Salt fell (literally) in the relatively plain Egg Room - some geese, the Egg-ucators, some boxes and other assorted things, but a much barer environment than the Inventing Room. And finally, Mike Teavee is sent off in the most vacuous setting yet. What is it?

It's a stark, bare, bland, sterile white room. There's a TV camera and monitor, a few Oompa-Loompas, but that's it. We've fallen from the Garden of Eden all the way to Limbo. These poor children have been tempted from the sublime settings to the subhuman ones. And Willy Wonka's hair is absolutely insane by this point. What a trip. What a movie.

(Now, to the ending. If you've gotten this far, but really don't want to know what happens to Charlie at the end, then you can skip down to my afterthoughts. I'm putting a little space here so you don't see the ending pictures. But this is the ending of the movie, below:)

Finally, with the sound of the doom-dirges ringing in their ears, Charlie and Gramps Joe wind up in the office of Wonka himself. Wonka gets angry at them for their failings before (viz. Fizzy-Lifting Drinks), and Charlie gives Wonka back the Everlasting Gobstopper he had picked up - the one that Slugworth was after.

Or was it Slugworth? Of course, Wonka was just playing a trick on everyone, to test their character. (He's always doing these tests. It's so funny.)

Charlie didn't turn over Wonka's secrets to the ersatz Slugworth, and for that, Wonka knows that he can trust him with a very big gift: his entire candymaking enterprise. He wanted a heir, a successor to carry on his work after he is done.

And that means that Charlie's family will never be poor again, will have a whole wondrous factory to live in, and will never be lacking CHOCOLATE.

I'm not going to totally reveal what happens at the end, but it's pretty wonderful. And I like to think that after this was all said and done, Charlie gave him a great big hug and said "Willy Wonka, you're the best crazy madman candymaker that ever was!"

The End.

The film is of course based on the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. I've heard no fewer than three stories about why they changed the title for the film, all of which sound more or less plausible. Here they are, one by one:

1. The Quaker Oats Company, which had a large invested interest in the film, wanted the title change to stir up brand recognition for its accompanying line of "Wonka" candy products. This one seems the most likely to me, personally.
2. They changed it to give Gene Wilder title billing.
3. "Charley" was common slang for "white person", and people might take the adventures of "Charley" in the "chocolate" factory to mean something racially charged. This was to be a family movie in the early 70's, and this title would be a bad idea. Of course, not that there aren't worse subtexts already in the film, oh, heavens no.

In the introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum explicitly warns parents that his story was to be not only a true American fairy tale, but a much gentler sort of story than the harsh morality-play fairy tales of the nineteenth century. In these stories, children who misbehaved or broke the rules often suffered horrible, painful deaths, or terrible disfigurement.

Lewis Carroll also writes about these such stories in his famous - and contemporary - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Towards the beginning of the book, before Alice drinks the container labelled "DRINK ME", she is reminded of these "nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds...." You see, Carroll himself seemed to hold these stories in a bit of disregard, even in the 1860's.

But, oh, not Roald Dahl. Known for his wicked wit in writing short stories for adults, his teleplays for such programs as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and his very successful children's story James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an echo back to the old morality stories for children. The somewhat maniacal and effuse Wonka lays down the law, odd as it is, the children go against it, and suffer badly.

After all, look at what happens to those disobedient children. Augustus Gloop was shot into the fudge boilers. Violet Beauregard was turned into a blueberry. Veruca Salt was thrown down a garbage chute by squirrels. Mike Teavee was shrunk to diminuitive size by Wonka's special television cameras. All quite uncomfortable fates, to say the least. (Although it should be said that, in the book at least, these four naughty children came out alive at the end, although somewhat altered or harmed. In the movie, these loose ends are never tied. Let the speculation - and bad dreams - begin!)

You see, as much as the spirit of the book (and movie) are about thumbing the nose to authority when it doesn't matter, it is about obeying the rules when it does matter. And surely that is all it takes to make a responsible story?

I'm also going to admit that this is one of the very few motion pictures that I never am sick of seeing again. It's hard for me to drag myself to watch a movie once. Two or three views from me is a great compliment to a film. But this movie I loved to watch as a little child, and still love to watch now, and I have no idea how many times I've seen it.

Special Extra! And a bit of Codehappy trivia. My Windows shut-down sound? Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, exclaiming "Just press a button... and zing! You're off." And there it is. It's ideal for that purpose, don'tcha think?

If you really can't get enough Wonka, here's WonkaFacts! Read the transcript of the entire film here, see the movie goof-ups, catch up with what the cast members are doing nowadays, etc., etc. A quite good fan site, but unfortunately not updated in forever.

On video: The DVD for this movie, released by Warner Brothers, is unreservedly recommended. Not only is the print of crystal clear quality and the audio nicely digitally restored, but the extras are very good: a commentary track featuring the original kids all grown up, a documentary and promotional featurette for the film, a sing-a-long, the trailer of course, and four languages or subtitles (the usual English, French, and Spanish that you see on Region 1 DVDs, and also Portuguese. Muito bom!)