VANDERGRIFT'S VIDEOS: WILLY WONKA
AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Warner Home Video, Color 1971, 100 mins.
COMMENTS:
It is based on the well-known Roald
Dahl children's book. Imagine yourself in a world of chocolate. It all starts
when the mysterious mogul of candydom Willy Wonka offers a grand prize of a guided
tour of his factory-and a lifetime supply of sweets-to five lucky people who uncover
golden tickets inside five chocolate Wonka Bars.
"Willie Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory is probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is
everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny,
scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. . . . The
story, like all good fantasies, is about a picaresque journey. Willie Wonka
is the world's greatest chocolate manufacturer, and he distributes five golden
passes good for a trip through his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Each pass goes to a kid, who may bring an adult along, and our hero Charlie
(a poor but honest newsboy who supports four grandparents and his mother) wins
the last one. The other four kids are hateful in one way or another, and come
to dreadful ends. . . . Kids are not sugar and spice, not very often, and they
appreciate the poetic justice when a bad kid gets what's coming to him." From
Roger Ebert. Movie Home Companion. 1987 edition, pp.589-590.
RELATED BOOKS
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory. Illus. by Joseph Schindelman. New York: Knopf, 1964.
Dahl, Roald. James and the Giant Peach. Illus. by Nancy Ekholm Burkert.
New York: Knopf, 1961.
Dahl, Roald. The BFG. Illus. by Quentin Blake. New York: Farrar Straus
and Giroux, 1982.
Dahl, Roald. Matilda. Illus. by Quentin Blake. New York: Viking Kestral,
1988.
Dahl, Roald. Witches. Illus. by Quentin Blake. Mew York: Farrar Straus
and Giroux, 1984.
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Kay E. Vandergrift <kvander@scils.rutgers.edu;
Created February 22, 1996