By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Some movies are considered rites of passage, from watching Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time to Die Hard, there’s a whole genre of films so transcendent that they are a building block of our culture. Then there’s another genre of film that was so traumatizing to a generation that they want to inflict that same pain on their children, and it’s here we find The Neverending Story, My Girl, and Bridge to Terabitha. In between, there is one film, an iconic childhood fantasy film that delights and traumatizes in equal measure, and it’s available on Tubi today: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Gene Wilder’s All-Time Performance
Starring the legendary Gene Wilder in one of his greatest roles that can never be topped, Willy Wonka tells the timeless tale of young Charlie (Peter Ostrum) and his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson), who get to tour the magical Chocolate Factory. Joining them are a series of children and parents who might be the most annoying characters ever assembled in one film. Though the Factory itself is bright, colorful, and wonderful, after all, there’s an entire river of chocolate, it soon becomes a nightmare as the misbehaving children are ironically punished, one by one, from falling into the chocolate river to swelling into a grotesque human blueberry.
Truthfully, Willy Wonka is a terrifying man, and thankfully, Gene Wilder leans into this with his absurd, over-the-top performance as the Factory owner who must live in fear of a visit from OSHA. Then there’s the Oompa-Loompas who turn up to sing a song and clean up their boss’s mess, and while some are definitely catchy, culminating in the TV-based ditty about the diminutive Mike, there’s something off-putting about the unexplained orange men. But what’s truly nightmare-inducing is the creepy boat ride, complete with psychedelic lighting and bizarre, nonsensical images flashing across the scene as it is, quite accurately, described as being a “freak out.”
Parodied, Imitated, But Never Surpassed
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has been parodied and referenced so often in the 54 years since its release in 1971 that even those who haven’t seen the iconic original know the story. Fans can debate if Futurama had the best parody with “Fry and the Slurm Factory” or if it was Family Guy’s “Wasted Talent,” but it’s impossible to escape references to Wonka and the Oompa Loompas. It’s such an iconic film, that for decades, no one dared to touch it, and then, in 2005, Tim Burton released Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp, and if nothing else, it only proved the first film is perfect.
Burton’s remake tried to reveal too much about the past of Willy Wonka, a mistake that was corrected with the prequel, Wonka, starring Timothee Chalamet, which managed to capture a small part of the whimsy and wonder of the original. Though both the remake and the prequel were successful, neither could replace the 1971 film and Gene Wilder’s perfect performance. Sadly, one of the largest critics of the film was Roald Dahl, the author of the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who detested the songs, the ending, and, worse of all, the emphasis on Wonka over Charlie.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory may not be as traumatizing as The Neverending Story killing Artax or My Girl murdering Macauley Culkin, who can’t see without his glasses, with bees, but the boat ride, in particular, has been cited as one of the scariest moments in a children’s film. What other films try to do by offsetting scary moments with amazing moments of delight was, like Wilder’s performance, perfected by the 1971 film, which is why it has remained a classic to this day and is considered required viewing. Now it’s easier than ever for anyone to enter the world of imagination, where the youngest of viewers will get to learn the most important lesson of all moviegoers: you can’t remake a perfect film, and there’s never a need for a prequel.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is now streaming for free on Tubi.
