Thom and I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night, which was pretty good. (The following talks about one plot point, which I suppose really isn’t a spoiler, especially if you haven’t been living in a cave like me and you actually know how the story goes.) I have to admit that I hadn’t ever read the book or seen the original movie. Over the years I’d gathered bits and pieces of the story through pop-cultural hearsay, and then only recently did I watch the beginning of the original movie on TV. It was all a little weird as I expected, but I never finished watching it mostly because — thanks to my paranoid imagination — I had assumed, with maybe the exception of Charlie, that all the children died in the end!
So imagine my surprise watching the movie yesterday when they all emerge weary yet alive, having gone through the various candy machines. Ha. At that point I allowed myself to enjoy the movie a bit more. Up until then I was completely unsettled. I guess that’s the point. (I’m still not getting close to a squirrel.)
In an inverse sort of way, I’m reminded of that Friends episode where Phoebe finally finds out the fate of Old Yeller.
Aside: One of the previews we saw was for a very Nightmare Before Christmas-looking movie called Corpse Bride, which reunites many of Charlie‘s same creative forces (Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee, Danny Elfman, Deep Roy). I’m looking forward to that.
One reply on “‘Chocolate’ for the first time”
In my junior high, we had to read “The Yearling.” It’s a story about a Florida bayou family. The mother lost a baby to disease, and is mentally still frail from the blow. The family has a 10 year old son, Jody. Jody is devoted to his parents, but can’t understand his mother’s iciness and lack of love. One day, Jody’s dad shoots a deer. Jody finds the deer had a fawn, and asks to keep it as a pet. His father agrees.
The father is injured in a hurricane, and Jody and his mother must tend the farm. Only, the fawn eats the new crops! Jody replants everything. Again, the deer eats the crops! The mother pulls out a gun and kills the fawn. Jody flees, hating his mother. He floats down a river, is found by a riverboat captain, and sent home.
Jody, the “yearling,” has grown up. He’s “now a man” (at 10?). His mother finally sees what she might have lost, and loves her son again. But it’s too late; Jody doesn’t need her love as he’s a man now.
It was a great movie starring Gregory Peck.
Anyway, girls loved the book. LOVED IT! The fawn, the way Jody is so loving and sweet, the father’s adoration of his son, the works.
Cruel, evil, nasty young boys would often go up to these girls as they read the book in the library, and whisper, “You know…………… the fawn DIES IN THE END!”
The girls would break into tears!
The “Old Yeller” comment reminded me of that. 🙂