Childhood on the big screen

I went with Melanie et al to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night. Let me preface by saying I've only seen the Gene Wilder version once, while in grad school, and it didn't do a whole lot for me. I have, however, read the book approximately 16 million times.

I loved it! It stayed pretty true to the book and the changes that were made, made sense. A little back story on Willy Wonka added depth, lots of things were updated for the 21st century and the ending was significantly different but fit beautifully. If you've read the book, you'll understand why they changed the ending, the book ends with Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka in the elevator flying over town and leads directly into the next book Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator which would be hard to make a sequel out of (space hotel, Vicious Knids and all). So the ending didn't bother me.

Grandpa Joe was perfect and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka was weird, but in a good (and funny) way. The Johnny Depp Estrogen Brigade is not going to put this at the top of their list, though. He looks nothing like Captain Jack Sparrow and is instead rather creepily childlike. No pin-up poster material here.

"Everything here is eatable. I'm eatable, but that my children is called cannibalism and it is frowned upon in most societies."

How obsessed was I with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child? In the book, Charlie finds money on the street, ask every grownup near by if they've dropped it and finally goes into the sweet shop to buy one Willy Wonka Fudgemellow Delight before planning on taking the rest on the money to his parents (for food, since the family is slowly starving). The store owner sees how hungrily Charlie eats the first candy bar and gently pressures him into getting another and this is where the Golden Ticket appears. In the movie Charlie finds the money, buys one candy bar and finds the ticket, skipping all the things that made me feel such sympathy for him in the book. But the first part of the movie does a good job of that already, so I doubt the general non-book-reading viewing population noticed a thing.

Now I have to go find my copy of the books and give them a quick re-read.

In unrelated news, I bought Harry Potter 6 last night, but haven't started it. I'm finishing one of my plane books, I have the book club book to read and 2 more books for school. I don't know if all those will be done before I crack it open, but I think I'm scared it won't be as good as I expect and I'll be disappointed and am putting it off.

And in additional unrelated news, Lucy threw up during the night and as I was cleaning up I came to a startling revelation. It appears that she recently tried to eat a rock.

And back to the movie for a second. Grandma Georgina is a crocheter and the grandparent's bed is covered with beautiful crocheted afghans and bedrobes. And filled with little old people.