Official PoCo Muse Film Critic Jeff Schultz revisits Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for his July 2021 Review.
I’ve heard fantastic, carefree tales about what is like to be a kid in the 1970s. Car seats? Heck no, just throw your rugrats in the back of your station wagon, seat belts optional. Drinking from a garden hose? If it’s good enough for the plants, it can’t be that bad. Playing unsupervised? Live and learn. Junk food? Those who lived back then will tell you they ate and drank nothing but potato chips, stacked bologna sandwiches, hot dogs by the pack, Charleston Chews, Dolly Madison fruit pies, Zagnut bars, orange dreamsicles and a liter of grape or cherry Kool-Aid on a daily basis and never gained a pinch of fat on their torsos. The trick supposedly was their metabolism spiked beyond imagination because they were not tethered inside to their Xboxes, a slam to kids today. One author wasn’t letting the generation off the hook that easily and wrote a morality tale about the ramifications of childhood gluttony and consumerism. He was Roald Dahl and his book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was made into a film with Gene Wilder that showed at the Premier Theatre in July 1971.
Rather than oppose candy culture, the film mainly revels in it. The opening credit sequence could be described as a tribute to Pavlov’s dog with mouth-watering close-ups of creamy chocolate being stirred, molded into treats, packaged and shipped to a store near you. If it looks too much like a commercial, it’s because it is. The title of the film was changed to “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” as opposed to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” so it could promote a new line of candy bar made by the Quaker Oats Company. Producer David Wolper used Quaker Oats as sponsor for television shows he was making and agreed the movie would be a good tie-in for their Wonka bars. Reportedly Quaker’s Wonka bars melted too easily so they didn’t last long before the line was sold to another company. Unlike the candy, the movie escaped from being a disaster, and even though it was not a hit when released 50 years ago, it has become a timeless fantasy loved by many.
Living poor as church mice, the Bucket family gains a reason for hope. Their youngest member Charlie could win the prize of five lifetimes – a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with lifetime supply of chocolate – if he’s a lucky finder of a golden ticket inside a Wonka bar. His odds are diminished having only enough money to scrounge for two candy bars while kids of rich parents hire workers to unwrap thousands until they find one. Charlie’s faith finds him a ticket and next it’s off to the factory, which coincidentally is in his town and has enough mystery to it as a spooky old house. “No one ever goes in, no one ever comes out,” a popular legend claims. The procession into the factory is a media event and emerging for the first time since he locked the place up is the enigmatic Willy Wonka who dishes out delectable confectioneries as well as karma. This marketing gimmick we learn eventually is a disguise of Wonka’s way of choosing a successor to run his little kingdom of chocolate rivers, gum mountains, lick-able wallpaper and oompa-loompas, but it must be someone of unimpeachable character.
If there are five golden tickets for “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” it’s these – the imagination of Roald Dahl, the music by Leslie Bricusse (who you may remember we discussed in the January review of “Scrooge”), art direction by Harper Goff (who also worked on “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”) the bond between Charlie and Grandpa Joe, and the genius of Gene Wilder. Wilder agreed to do the role on one condition, that he would limp when we first see him and then somersault his way into a leap. This is so those watching the movie won’t know if Wonka is ever telling the truth, Wilder said to his bosses. Wilder broke into film with a memorable short role in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” but his second film launched him to stardom co-starring in Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” as nervous accountant Leo Bloom. It would be three years after Willy Wonka that Wilder would star in a pair of films again with Mel Brooks, the Waco Kid in “Blazing Saddles” and as Dr. Fredrick “Fronk-en-steen” in “Young Frankenstein.” After that, he would find another comedy partner, Richard Pryor, starting with “Silver Streak” in 1976.
The factory scenes get most of the pizzazz, but just as rewarding is Dahl’s satirical bite that’s part of the potpourri of the first act. Reports are flying in on TV of Wonka mania and the candy is being used as the ransom in kidnappings and the inspiration of super-computers designed to pinpoint where the golden tickets are. Watching the movie in 2021 evokes memories of when people were sparring with one another over toilet paper. Veruca Salt would have been one. The rampant greed shown provides the contrast to Charlie’s integrity. His hero moment leaving the Everlasting Gobstopper in Wonka’s office instead of selling it to competitors brings forth our moral. Wonka, paraphrasing Shakespeare, looks and says “So shines good deed in a weary world.”
“Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” shines itself in a deluge of other films studios were throwing at kids at the time like “Godzilla’s Revenge”, “Pufnstuf,” and “Digby: The Biggest Dog in the World.” I had before considered “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” a minor film but today I find it among the ranks of “The Wizard of Oz” or “Harry Potter” where there is real magic within the movie and we’re not just seeing actors in costumes like many kid fantasy offerings. I give it 3 ½ out of 4 stars. The Premier’s owners probably felt the magic too by a rise in sales at the candy counter.