Tuesday, October 29, 2013

270. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Title: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Year: 2005

Summary: 
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: After school, kids go to a local candy shop, where the owner Bill serves chocolate to the kids. Charlie Bucket, saddened that he has no money, stares through the window as the owner sings about candy. The newsagent Mr. Jopeck, for whom Charlie works after school, gives him his weekly pay, which Charlie uses to buy a loaf of bread. On his way, he passes Wonka's chocolate factory. A mysterious tinker tells him (referring to the factory) "nobody ever goes in ... and nobody ever comes out!" He brings the bread back to his widowed mother, Grandpa Joe and his other three bedridden grandparents. That night, he tells Grandpa about the tinker and what he said, and Grandpa Joe tells him about Wonka and how spies were trying to steal his life's work. Wonka closed the factory, but three years later he started selling candy again and is still unseen to this day.
One day, the family, along with the rest of the world, learns that Wonka has hidden five Golden Tickets in his Wonka Bars. The finders of these special tickets will be given a full tour of his factory, as well as a lifetime supply of chocolate to the "winner". Charlie wants to take part in the search, but cannot afford to buy vast quantities of chocolate bars like other participants. Four of the tickets are found by: Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, a spoiled English girl; Violet Beauregarde, a gum-chomping American girl; and Mike Teevee, a television-obsessed American boy. As they find their tickets, a sinister-looking man is observed whispering in their ears, to whom they listen attentively despite their preoccupations with their particular obsessions. Charlie's hopes are dashed when news breaks that the final ticket had been found by a Paraguayan millionaire.
The next day, as the Golden Ticket craze ends, Charlie finds some money in a gutter and uses it to buy a Wonka Bar. Since he still has some change left after eating the chocolate, he uses it to buy a second bar, which he intends bringing home. On leaving the candy store, he learns from people talking that the ticket found by the millionaire was a forgery and that one ticket is still about somewhere. When Charlie opens the bar, he finds the real golden ticket and races home to tell his family, but is confronted by the same man who had been seen whispering to the other four winners. The man introduces himself as Arthur Slugworth, a rival confectioner who offers to pay Charlie a large sum of money for a sample of Wonka's latest creation, the Everlasting Gobstopper.
Grandpa Joe practically leaps out of bed to serve as Charlie's tour chaperone and Charlie tells him about his meeting with Slugworth. The next day, Wonka greets the children and their guardians at the factory gates and leads them inside, requiring each to sign a contract before the tour can begin. Inside is a psychedelic wonderland full of chocolate rivers, giant edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper and other ingenious inventions and candies, as well as Wonka's workers, the small, orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa-Loompas. While in Wonka's Inventing Room, the remaining children are each given a sample of Wonka's Everlasting Gobstoppers.
As the tour progresses, each of the first four children ignore Wonka's warnings, resulting in serious consequences: Augustus is sucked through a chocolate extraction pipe system and sent to the Fudge Room, having fallen into a chocolate river from which he was trying to drink; Violet transforms into a giant blueberry after trying an experimental piece of Three-Course-Dinner Gum; Veruca is rejected as a "bad egg" and falls down a garbage chute in the Chocolate Golden Egg Sorting Room; and Mike is shrunk to only a few inches in height after being transmitted by "Wonkavision", a broadcasting technology that can send objects through television instead of pictures. The Oompa-Loompas sing a song after each incident, describing that particular child's poor behavior.
During the tour, Charlie also succumbs to temptation along with Grandpa Joe, as they stay behind in the Bubble Room and secretly sample Fizzy Lifting Drinks. They begin floating skyward and are nearly sucked into a ceiling-mounted exhaust fan. To avoid this grisly fate, they burp repeatedly until they return to the ground. Wonka initially seems unaware of this incident. When Charlie becomes the last remaining child on the tour, Wonka dismisses him and Grandpa Joe and leaves for his office. Grandpa Joe returns to ask about Charlie's lifetime supply of chocolate, Wonka angrily reveals that Charlie had violated the contract signed before the tour began by sampling the Fizzy Lifting Drinks and thus forfeited his prize, and Wonka dismisses them. Grandpa Joe vows to give Slugworth the gobstopper in revenge. Charlie, however, is unable to bring himself to hurt Wonka and places the gobstopper on his desk.
Wonka recants and begs for his guests' forgiveness. He reveals that "Slugworth" is actually an employee named Wilkinson, whose offer to buy the gobstopper (as well as Wonka's tirade) was all part of a morality test for the Golden Ticket winners, and Charlie was the only one who passed the test. The trio enter the "Wonkavator", a multi-dimensional glass elevator, and fly out of the factory in it. As they soar over the city, Wonka tells Charlie that his actual prize is not just the chocolate but the factory itself, as the Golden Ticket search was created to help Wonka search for an honest and worthy child to be his heir. Charlie and his family will reside in the factory and take over its operation when Wonka retires.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Charlie Bucket is a loving and kind boy, who lives in poverty with his mother, father, and four bedridden grandparents. His mother is unemployed and his father works at a toothpaste factory, responsible for putting the caps on the tubes of toothpaste that come through the line. Down the street is Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, which had recently been reopened after industrial espionage forced him into seclusion and to fire his employees. Charlie's Grandpa Joe had worked for Wonka directly and was laid off when that happened.
One day, Wonka announces a contest; the children that find the five Golden Tickets wrapped in ordinary Wonka candy bars will be given a full tour of the factory and a chance for an unknown grand prize. Four children quickly claim their prize: the greedy and gluttonous, Augustus Gloop from Düsseldorf, the spoiled and rotten, Veruca Salt from London, the competitive and boastful, Violet Beauregarde from Atlanta, and the arrogant and aggressive, Mike Teavee from Denver. Charlie hopes to win as well, but neither the bar he is given as a birthday present nor the one bought for him by Grandpa Joe contains a ticket. A fifth child in Russia claims to have found the last Ticket. Charlie, on finding a dollar bill, buys a Wonka bar as news breaks that the Russian child's Ticket was fake; Charlie finds the bar he just bought contains the last Golden Ticket. Bystanders attempt to buy it from him, but with the shopkeeper's help, he returns home with the ticket.
Grandpa George reminds Charlie that money is far more common than the Tickets, and convinces Charlie to keep it. Grandpa Joe offers to accompany him on the factory tour. On the day of the tour, the children and their chaperones find Wonka to be a strange, lonely individual, acting odd at the mention of "parents". As they proceed with the tour, they discover the fantastical factory is now manned by short humans called Oompa-Loompas. The other four children succumb to temptation, and end up caught in the factory workings before being safely recovered by the Oompa-Loompas, albeit in worse shape than at the start of the tour: Augustus falls into the river of chocolate but is rescued before the fudge processing center, Violet expands into an oversized blueberry when she tries an experimental piece of chewing gum, Veruca is thrown away as a "bad nut" by trained squirrels, and Mike is shrunk down to a few inches tall after being the first person transported by Wonka's new television advertising invention.
Wonka congratulates Charlie as the last remaining child and the winner of the grand prize, to become Wonka's heir to the factory. However, Wonka forbids Charlie to bring his family to the factory, and Charlie rejects the offer. Charlie comes to learn that Wonka had a troubled past with his father, Wilbur Wonka. Wilbur, a dentist, had forbidden Wonka from eating candy (to the point of putting his son in torture device-like braces), but once Wonka got a taste, he wanted to become a confectioner himself against his father's wishes. After running away from home to follow his dream, Wonka later returned to find Wilbur and his home gone completely. Charlie is able to help locate Wilbur and convinces Wonka to visit him. Wonka finds his father has followed his success throughout the years, and the two reunite as father and son. Wonka allows Charlie's family to move into the factory while he and Charlie plan out new types of candy to make.

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