Last night, a good hour and a half past the time I actually went to bed, I had the slight feeling that I was going feel exceedingly crappy the next morning. Sure enough, when I awoke, the cold that had been on a slow, painful migration through every part of my body over the last two days had arrived on the side of my face. Trying to constructively work on a dissertation while your entire mug feels like an exposed nerve-ending that has been pounded by a large rubber mallet is a rather less effective use of one’s time, I’ll tell you right now.
Again, our fearless bastion of dopery, Eric Snider, has churned out another winning review, this time of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If as much time were spent on applying analytical skills as was put into checking IMDB for the actor names of the entire cast, we might consider his rather placid ‘B’ rating more credible. As it stands, we do know that ‘What is missing from the whole thing is… warmth’, as if our previous knowledge of Dahl’s story, and even the 1971 film adaptation, would have us curling up for hugs with dear Uncle Wonka. I wonder if Snider is suggesting that Wonka embrace the ludicrous jackassery of the visiting children, or that we should also sympathise with them. To hastily criticise the icy detachment of a story that is critical toward the puppetish parenting of bratty, misbehaving kids as well as class divisions and institutionalism in post-war Britain seems rather short-sighted – especially since his review has failed to explain why we should feel otherwise. As if to avoid further examination, his reductive comment explaining the casting of only one actor to play the entire Oompa-Loompa clan is simply disregarded as part of Burton’s silliness, ‘Because it’s more fun this way.’ It would be interesting to hear Tim Burton’s thoughts on that one.