Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is opening this weekend, and getting good reviews. It's at 73% approval
on Metacritic, and 83% positive
on Rotten Tomatoes. The odd part is that it's getting some of those scores in spite of Johnny Depp's performance, which most people assumed would make or break the film. Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post gave it the lowest score of any major reviewer,
and said of Depp:
There's a smidgen of Mr. Rogers here, a bit of Dana Carvey's Church Lady there; the exaggerated top hat, foppish coat and waxy green pallor suggest a creature worthy of Dr. Seuss, and those prosthetic choppers can't help but recall Depp's own performance as the title character in Burton's 1994 movie "Ed Wood." And that hair--a lacquered pageboy with wisps of Mamie Eisenhower bangs -- that hair can bring to mind only one person these days, and that's the currently incarcerated New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
The cumulative effect isn't pretty. Nor is it kooky, funny, eccentric or even mildly interesting. Indeed, throughout his fey, simpering performance, Depp seems to be straining so hard for weirdness that the entire enterprise begins to feel like those excruciating occasions when your parents tried to be hip. If you have to try that hard, you just aren't.
Ebert liked the film enough to give it 3/4 stars, but his approval came about despite Depp's performance, which is compares to just one existing celebrity -- one no one wants to be compared to.
Johnny Depp may deny that he had Michael Jackson in mind when he created the look and feel of Willy Wonka, but moviegoers trust their eyes, and when they see Willy opening the doors of the factory to welcome the five little winners, they will be relieved that the kids brought along adult guardians. Depp's Wonka -- his dandy's clothes, his unnaturally pale face, his makeup and lipstick, his hat, his manner -- reminds me inescapably of Jackson (and, oddly, in a certain use of the teeth, chin and bobbed hairstyle, of Carol Burnett).
We'll likely see it this weekend anyway, so stay tuned for my oh-so-important critical reaction.
Speaking of critical reaction, I've recently watched The Incredibles twice on DVD (once in San Diego with dad, once here while bored in the late afternoon heat) and it's really grown on me. Looking back at
my original review I see that I gave it an 8, but more because I thought I should than because I really enjoyed it. I appreciated the quality and intelligence of it then, but didn't really connect with the characters on an emotional level. I now do, while appreciating the rest of it even more, and really can't say enough about it. The action sequences are genius, the characters are smart and realistic, and the actual acting performances, animated though they are, are really quite brilliant. Watch virtually any conversation scene in the film and really study their body language, facial expressions, and so on. Better than real humans can do them, for the most part.
Inspired by The Incredibles, I finally got around to watching Finding Nemo again. I wrote about it last year when I saw it for the first time on DVD, but never put up an actual review. Well,
there's one up now, and happily I liked the movie a lot more the second time through. I don't love it, mostly because it's just too aimed for children to give me that much adult satisfaction, and I wish there was more to the plot than Marlin and Dotty's endless roadtrip, but I'm sure kids worship the film, and it's good enough for adults to sit through as well.
Finally, I must admit that the constant barrage of "Coming this Tuesday!" TV ads for the
Constantine DVD (18 minutes of bonus footage!) are starting to work on me. I was surprised at how much I liked the film when I saw it in the theater last year, I especially loved the glorious imagery, and since that's what the commercials are ladeling on, I'm itching. Buying it new would be foolish, since it'll be used at Blockbuster in a month for half price, and since we've got 2 DVDs here now we haven't seen yet, plus the Chocolate Factory movie this weekend... And yet my urge to possess it forthwith is, like all desires, essentially untrammeled by logic or rationality.
