So, we took the boys to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today at the Imax. We tried to go yesterday, but Aidan suddenly got very ill just as we got to the theater (a 30 minute drive on a Sunday) so we turned around and came back home. Luckily, we got passes for our non-refundable tickets ($60 for the four of us!). It took over an hour to get there today (Monday), and he started to feel ill again just as we got there. The going theory is that he was just too excited to see the movie, but it was a tough situation to deal with. After an hour of stop-and-go traffic I was not prepared to turn back around and go without seeing the movie for the second time. Luckily, as we figured, he felt better by the time the previews started (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire can make anyone feel better). I love a teaser trailer, they are always cooler than the "here's the entire plot to the movie" trailer that comes out later. My all-time favorite teaser was the one for Strange Days that was just Ralph Fiennes doing the hard-sell for playback (being Lenny, his character from the movie). No scenes from the movie at all; it was brilliant.
But anyway, Willy Wonka. First off, I love an Elfman score. This one was Elfman genius. It used the oompah-loompah songs from the book (it always bugged me that the first movie didn't seem to find them worthy). Oliver and I sat through all the credits because he's a music nut too. Secondly, Johnny Depp is the bomb. He knows just how far to go to make the character really interesting, then pushes it just a bit farther. One of the reviews I've read was comparing a Depp comedic performance, which is always in character, to someone like Jim Carey, where it's anything for the laugh. I like both kinds of performances, actually, but each kind tends to work in a very different type of movie. Anyway, as much as I loved Gene Wilder in the first movie, Depp goes in a completely different direction. What can I say, he's brilliant (and he apparently had a lot of fans in the theater tonight).
It's an all-around very cool movie, faithful to the book to an almost LOTR degree. There was an added spin about the meaning of family, but it's not cheesy. Tim Burton vies for the number one spot on my list of all-time favorite directors, and so far I've seen all of his films in the theater except Planet of the Apes (yeah, I know; I have the DVD but only watched it once) and Big Fish (which is really excellent; Ewan MacGregor does a Southern accent that is to die for). Tim has gotten a lot of mileage out of his own emotionally traumatic childhood (he has a book of poems I quite like that is particularly clear on this theme). I think it's really cool that he made a movie where the main character realizes the importance of his own family, rather than the sort of vogue thing these days of finding a circle of friends and making them "like family". I reckon it's because Tim just started his own family. Everything changes when you have kids, right?
Allow me to recommend Imax presentations of Hollywood movies. This is the third for the boys, second for me (I couldn't bring myself to go see Robots; I hated Ice Age and can't take anymore of Robin Williams, whom I used to find very funny). The tickets are quite a bit more ($60 for the four of us), but that tends to keep out the riff-raff; you have to make a commitment to the movie to drive all the way to Apple Valley and pay that much to see it. Still, best sound, best picture (by a long shot; no chewed-up prints here). They even let you bring in your own food (and they ought to at these prices). We're already planning to go there to see Harry Potter in November, just in time for Aidan's birthday.
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