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All words posted on this blog are the sole property of Michael Duffy (except where noted). Images are collected from the web and are shared herein to illustrate film reviews and opinions. If you are the owner of an image and do not wish to see it used for these purposes, please email me and I will remove it. |
Sunday, August 21, 2005
"You're really weird." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory What a great pop confection fantasy movie. Wonderfully engaging, fanciful without being wispy, emotional without being sappy, smart without being pretentious. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is my favorite film of the year (and I'd argue it still will be by year's end). Performance criticisms be damned, I loved Johnny Depp's uncomfortable, surprising, culturally aware (yet emotionally withdrawn) portrayal of Willy Wonka -- this is as good, or possibly better, than anything he did in Pirates. Whether this film is "more like the books" or not is really of no interest to me. Whether Depp's performance reminds anyone of a certain pop star's recent strangeness, is really not my concern. I found this film enjoyable and fulfilling from beginning to end. Contrary to my English colleagues, I don't call many things "brilliant" -- this is one film that I will. Maybe it's because I've always been a Tim Burton nut -- but this shouldn't preclude me from praising this film as a near-masterpiece on its own merits. This is the kind of movie Hollywood, and the general contemporary family community, needs to make and see more of. A story about what happens when you believe in yourself and your bonds with your family. Indeed, the most striking message this movie sends, to me, is one of defiance to all parents who treat their children either like trophies or trash -- and especially a big finger of comeuppance to parents who do not discipline their kids. I love how this film takes the selfishness and the brattiness that we deliver to other people everyday and throws it right back at us -- and just like humanity, surprises us with a sudden surplus of affection and love. The first half-hour of the film is genuinely touching in its establishment of Charlie's rundown and poor family, two pairs of grandparents, one pair of parents, yet seemingly enough love and encouragement to keep them all going, bit by bit. When a film has you near tears in the first fifteen minutes, you know you're on to something. Helena Bonham Carter (now partnered with Burton in real life) delivers a wonderful performance of small joys as Charlie's mother. When Charlie has the extraordinary chance to break out, even if just for a day, and experience the joys of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, he takes the decision not with great surprise and loudness, but with quiet joy and contemplativeness (his grandparents are more excited then he is). Did I say 'joy' too much? Well, that's how I feel. To all those who criticize Burton for preference of set design over story -- I dare you to watch the first thirty minutes of this movie and not be moved through narrative and character, as if it was its own little film onto itself. Peppered with wonderful allusions to Burton's past films (did you catch Depp's Wonka stretching out a great pair of scissors as he cuts the ribbons of his factory some "15 years ago"?), the chocolate factory is all the more amazing not for what it includes, but rather what it promises not to. Here there is apparently no sadness, no horror, just great confectionary delight for all those Ooompa-loompas who work here, and the rare visitors who get to see. But this is the amusing thing: Wonka has other things in mind -- he makes sure that he not only weeds out the children who don't deserve the ultimate prize (which are nearly all of them) but that he has great fun while doing it. Danny Elfman's score once again amazes -- it feels like he and Burton are almost tied at the waist, their sensibilities match so well. Elfman uses author Roald Dahl's original words and creates new music for five great songs which frame each of the children's predicaments. These musical sequences are, to me, a stroke of genius. Smart, referential, yet timeless, these sequences will hopefully provide one of main reasons this film will be enjoyed for generations to come (I knew the true joy of the movie had reached children when the closing credits rolled and the boy seated in front of me jumped out of his seat and began dancing and miming to the music). Alex McDowell's production design -- assembled and filmed inside Pinewood Studios in England) is a wonder and a feat. Yes, it feels exactly like a factory or a studio -- entirely as its supposed to. Christopher Lee is given a few nice menacing, and finally touching, scenes, in flashbacks as Wonka's father. It is great to see someone like Burton use Lee in a way that both utilizes and successfully pulls away from Lee's longstanding image as a heavy (villain). There's also some really nice, quite interesting cinematic allusioning going on in the 'Wonka TV' scene. 2001: A Space Odyssey is referenced and equally played with visually, orally and culturally. We never get quite completely into Wonka's head, but Depp's performance is so quicksure and turncoat that he makes sure we never have to think about it. Keeping us amused with an "I don't care" here and a "Let's boogie" there, Depp amazingly conveys a performative riffing on cultures and stereotypes which simultaneously makes fun of and adds meaning to all the ways in which we think about how to treat ourselves and others in the world everyday. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory succeeds more than Burton's 're-imagining' of Planet of the Apes (which I still defend, if only for Tim Roth's and Bonham-Carter's performances) some years back because of script and source material. John August's wonderful and witty screenplay for Charlie should not go unmentioned here; having contributed a nicely layered story for Burton's sorely underrated Big Fish, August here defies using contemporary cultural reference points and shoddy teenage humor (this is a film suitable for kids of any age), instead focusing on Wonka himself, and what makes his friction with his visitors so quirky and addictive. [I'm not even going to get into Gene Wilder's Wonka, which, while wonderful, in my opinion doesn't really have anything to do with this film.] Oddly enough, if anyone gets short shrift in this film, it is the title character himself. Charlie, played with quite meaningfulness by Freddie Highmore (who caps an amazingly touching performance alongside Depp in the final moments of Finding Neverland), is almost our eyes to witness all the wonderful and surprising happenings in these few special days of his life. He never quite gets the full emotional due he deserves from us, the audience, because the film is also narrated by what turns out to be (or what is supposed to be, I think), the first Oompa Loompa, played by Deep Roy, who is duplicated by digital technology to perform all of the Loompas. [I could swear it's actually Christopher Lee's voice, slightly distorted, as the narrator as well -- but it's credited to someone else in the end titles.] Still, all of that is a small, small critcism for what I consider to be the highlight of the year emotionally and more importantly, morally (not that I'm fanatical in any way). Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a film that defies catagorization, as it is arguably equally appealing and fulfilling for audiences of all ages, and not boring, pandering or culturally 'hip' in any way that will date it in years to come. I won't comprehend anyone who can't find true emotion, joy and laughter in this film -- it surely has more of it than anyone could expect or deserve these days. I find it very interesting that in the summer of 1989, Tim Burton released his first Batman film -- now, in the summer of 2005, a new Batman film has arrived, but Burton has equaled and surpassed that piece of work with something much more emotionally and critically fulfilling, a film that shows the same real maturity he revealed in last year's Big Fish, but also the same sarcasm, humor, pathos and childlike wonder that he perfected in Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Edward Scissorhands. Tim Burton, who is known not to have had the greatest childhood himself, has made the greatest of family movies -- now how weird is that? There's a difference between sarcasm and cynicism. "You're really weird", you may say to me. Well, maybe. But I found joy in this film in a manner I rarely witness these days in cinema. [P.S. Burton's Corpse Bride looks equally wonderful!] Thursday, August 04, 2005
Fantastic Four Just got back from seeing this. Frankly, I was expecting to be more disappointed than I was with this movie. Still, it's quite a mixed bag -- it's like the film is ever so precariously lying on that edge of awfulness and decent-ness from start to finish. It's tolerable, if often tedious, humorous in moments, but often quite silly and groan-inducing. It unfortunately represents almost everything that's wrong with Hollywood these days -- great characters and drama are pushed aside in favor of empty spectacle (with rushed and not quite natural-looking visual effects) and insufficient plotting and scripting. The four main characters are Reed Richards (Welshman Ioan Gruffold of Horatio Hornblower, that's Yo-ann Griffith to the non-familiars), Sue Storm (the nearly awful but just barely tolerable Jessica Alba), Johnny Storm (previous non-entity Chris Evans, mildly amusing here) and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis of The Shield, by far the best thing in this movie). Victor Von Doom (handsome but deadly Aussie Julian McMahon from Nip/Tuck, very similar in tone here) is the antagonist, whose character has such clear echoes of Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborn from Spider-Man that I'd tell Marvel Comics to sue if it weren't already from the same company. There's so little plot in this movie that I felt like I had to start digging the damn hole myself. The characters are introduced in the most basic of character archetypes, geek, tough but loyal friend to geek, arrogant one, "hot sister", and old intellectual and romantic nemesis, who is now pissed-off, corporate, and power-hungry. Jokes and criticisms are thrown like fire (ha!) the first fifteen minutes; I leaned over to my viewing companion and said, "If they all hate each other so much, why are they even talking to each other?" My companion responded quickly, "Money." And that, my friends, is of course the root of all evil. It is why studios see green now in comic-book adaptations, and why after more than ten years of active development, a way was found to finally get this "World's Greatest Comic Magazine" to the screen. The look and mood of Fantastic Four owes so much to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films -- a bright, optimistic post-9/11 New York where even firemen can be saved but where all crowds "hail a hero". Yet they worship fame even more, and that's where this picture finds it's one small dichotomy. When the five "colleagues" (I'm trying to think of a less-grouping word but I can't at the moment) take a seemingly very abrupt mission to the space station to capture some energy rays for some reason I can't remember or care to, they are all surprised by the rather rapid arrival of said cosmic ray, which hadn't been expected for another six hours. Gotcha! As they return to Earth, each of them find that they are experiencing their own personal nirvana, or rather, hell, exagerrating their "natural" personalities to find their physical bodies are changing in "fantastic" ways. Reed attains the power to stretch in all manner of ways, Sue gains the power of invisibility -- although also these strange quantum-like force field powers which are not explained whatsoever. Johnny, the resident "hothead", of course gains control of his "flaming personality", and Ben tragically transforms into a rock-like creature ever so kindly called "The Thing." Victor Von Doom is also undergoing a strange transformation of his own -- wouldn't it be great if he actually grew a new character out of his head? -- in a change from his comic-origin, Doom's skin and physical structure transforms mecho-organically, in other words, he's becoming part metal, folks. And that's about it. The four heroes struggle to deal with their newfound fame and powers, while Doom struggles to attain more and more power, and to get revenge on his former colleagues for the cosmic space accident. Fans of Ioan Gruffold from Hornblower and elsewhere really won't find much to enjoy here, other than a few sporadic scenes where he looks beautiful but doesn't say anything -- his attempted New York/American accent grounds him so flatly into the film's world that he disappears, and frankly his character is such a wimp most of the time (or accused of being such) that you almost want Doom to get the girl and win anyway. The choice of Jessica Alba for this role really puzzles me. While guys tend to dig her physically (although I must say she's never done a thing for me), her quote-unquote "acting" ability or presence on screen mostly just really annoys the hell out of me. Her first entrance "in costume" is particularly cringe-inducing, not only for her lack of talent and emotion, but for the extremely obvious "enhancement" of her central anatomy in a scene which has just featured a comic moment focusing on completely zipping-up somebody else. [I have a real dislike of Alba as a personality and actress, but I'll save you my complete rant on it right here. My friends hear it enough from me.] I actually found some minor interest in Doom's development as well, although other than his helmet, his final "costume" is not explained whatsoever. The film suffers from its struggle to appeal to a mainstream, "hip" audience while also reflecting over 60 years worth of comic history and the establishment of a villain who pre-dated Darth Vader and just about everyone else in contemporary popular culture. This version of Fantastic Four seems based more on Marvel's "Ultimate" comic line, which concentrates on re-establishing central popular characters such as Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and younger, more contemporary versions of their classically-minded counterparts. The main problem with Fantastic Four, the movie, is that despite a reported $100 million-plus budget, the film still looks more like a television series-pilot, and reflects sensibilities that will date the movie in the years that follow. It's chief faults are once again the script and the direction. Picking a mildy successful Barbershop-experienced Tim Story (ironic, that name) to direct, when they could have had someone like Chris Columbus (who was attached to the project through its early development) is a grave mistake here. While I understand that comic sensibilities were wanted for this more humorous bunch of heroes, the script was clearly not of any caliber that just-any director could do anything greater with. In other words, it all comes back to the story. If you don't have a good one, you're out from day one. Fantastic Four apparently went through numerous last-minute reshoots, which included re-shooting most of the last 20 minutes of the action climax (Fox gave up $20 million more for these efforts). It's sad to say that even the climax that now ends the film is mildly-interesting at best, and short. Stranger still, versions of the film with different scenes cut-in have surfaced in theatres in South America and Europe, possibly indicating that Fox up to release date still wasn't quite sure which version of the film they thought best to release. Chiklis' Thing is by far the most heartfelt and interesting character in a movie that could have been so much more. There are a few moments with the Thing where you really understand from this actor and character how much of a personal hell he must endure to be stuck in this pitiable rock form for the rest of his human existence. Like the movie, it's a little, but it could have been so much more. When a probable $150 million in production and marketing costs is spent on a feature film, I just want something more from my entertainment, a little more heart and competence, something that inspires me to be a better person in this life, something that takes me away for a few hours and makes me forget that perhaps all of this money could go to something more worthwhile, like third world debt relief that would save thousands of lives. That audiences in America and elsewhere have turned out to see this pretty mediocre family-friendly film to the tune of more than $200 million worldwide so far, despite almost universally bad reviews, really says something about the ambivalence of the state of the moviegoing public today. I'm not sure just what quite yet -- I'll get back to you on that... |