The Handsome Honey bought this dvd for me for Christmas. I guess, technically, this qualified as a present from his 4 year old son, Lil' A and my puppy, Pickles. We saw the movie this summer on the big family vacation in Wildwood, New Jersey, on the beach. It was pretty cool, but a little too loud and people should be prepared for there to be heads in their way when some people bring beach blankets and others bring chairs. You don't get stadium seating on the beach. Deal with it.
I finally watched the dvd Saturday night. We had Lil' A for the day and my niece and nephew came over to play with him and we popped in the dvd for the kids. Handsome Honey felt compelled to bring out the candy jar so everyone could get all sugared up. It was a big night for lollipops in our house. Lil' A felt compelled to drag Baby Girl and Little Man to the mirror to check on the colors of their tongues on a fairly regular basis. By the time the movie ended, my mother and sister-in-law had stopped to pick up the niece and nephew and it was just Lil' A and I watching the end of the movie. We even learned the Oompa Loompa dances on the extras. HH loves the Augustus Gloop song and I'm partial to the Violet Beauregard song, so I did both dances with Deep Roy as my guide. I'm incapable of passing up the opportunity to do crazy dances in the privacy of my own home. I don't sing or dance (at least not my own versions of dances and crazy dance routines) in public, even when very tempted to do so.
Of course, it all made me think of the original Willie Wonka . When the movie came out, way back when, my brother and I had the chicken pox and didn't get to see it. Remember the days when there was only one screen at all of the movie theaters and you didn't have much time to get in and see a movie? Instead, to make it up to us, my mother bought us the soundtrack. It had all those beeps and whirrs and assorted noises and voices leading up to the songs and I had them all memorized, despite the fact that I had no idea what corresponded to them visually and in the story. The whole weird song, Gene Wilder sings when they get on that crazy boat "There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going..." Not to mention all of the scene with Charlie and Grandpa Joe getting sucked up the tube and almost into the fan from the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, including all of the burps it required to get them back down to the ground, Yup, they were all there. All on that vinyl LP that we practically wore through on our record player.
I didn't actually see the movie until I was a freshman in college. There I was, the 17 year old freshman, who looked more like she was 12 at a fraternity party. I was in the living part of the Sig Ep house, which was just as disgusting as the party side of the house, but it had carpeting and a tv and the seats weren't currently soaked with cheap beer. I was talking to someone and recognized the sound coming from the tv. It sounded just like that Willie Wonka album I'd had as a kid. I guess at that point the movie had become a non-issue, it was just the soundtrack that still existed. I turned, and sure enough, there it was, Willie Wonka. I sat there transfixed, staring at the tv screen, surrounded by amused fraternity boys who were shocked that I was seeing this movie for the first time. Of course, these were the same boys who decided that I reminded them of a Cabbage Patch Kid. I never saw the resemblance myself, but the name spread across campus in a flash. By the following summer I would have strangers coming up to me at the Jersey shore asking if I was the Cabbage Patch Kid from parties at the Sig Ep, ZBT and TKE houses.
As far as the new version goes, I really like Johnny Depp and the little Peter guy from Finding Neverland who played Charlie Bucket. They are really good together. I liked that everything around Willie Wonka was technicolor, but he was practically black and white. Yeah, he was a little creepy and I certainly didn't have the same warm, tingly feelings as I had for him in most of his other movies. Oh, not in Pirates of the Caribbean, either ~ he was way too unwashed looking. As my nephew, Little Man used to say "I can't yike that."
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