Revolutionary Rants

Here I am again. The little people left on Sunday, and yesterday I was busy shopping for my younger brother’s birthday present in town (I left it foolishly late this year - as it is tomorrow, and I would usually have got several gifts by about February - but I got a, hopefully, really cool pressie anyway! We’ll see if he likes it tomorrow…

Last week was very busy, with lots of playing, beaching, soldier games and drawing! On Friday most of us went to watch the new Tim Burton version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Now, having grown up on the Gene Wilder ‘I’ve got a golden ticket! I’ve got a golden chance to make my way!’ musical version, I was hoping the usually fantastically dark Burton would have made a Gothic film to remember. And, yes, the film is good, you enjoy it whilst watching it, but once you leave the cinema you can’t help but feel you’ve just been watching ‘Edward Sissorhands and the Chocolate Factory’…

The usually excellent Johnny Depp was just plain creepy - without the edge of Wilder’s earlier representation - and appeared stoned throughout! Freddie Highmore had little to work with with the loathsome character of Charlie, and Grandpa Joe was little more than a back ground player. However, the ‘bad’ kids were wonderful, even better than the original (especially Mike Teevee), Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompas was an interesting twist, and the scene with the squirrels was brilliant (although the rest of the sets lacked the magic one would expect in a Burton film). Overall, worth a watch, but not a lasting memory film.