Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Last night, after eating a slap up meal of sushi and the such at a particularly good restaurant in Mitaka (ironically a sister restaurant of the original Shirokiya, a particularly not spectacular izakaya) we retired to enjoy a few bottles of very old wine and watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Hi-Def which my dad-in-law had previously recorded off Wowow (and then we tried to watch The Great Escape and Lawrence of Arabia in equally Hi-Def but didn't get very far). The film left me with a number of questions.

1. Charlie and his entire family all have strong British accents, and given Charlie's extremely young age, it seems reasonable to conclude that the seven of them must have emigrated to the US quite recently (together with the bed from which four of them had not left during the process, nor to go to the toilet or anything). Given that they barely have enough brass coppers to rub together to purchase a cabbage, or a bar of chocolate, this sounds to me like a somewhat extravagant move. My first guess is that they're not one of them very bright, and that's why they're so poor. My second guess is that they're simply following in the tradition of such classics as Messenger, Amadeus, Phantom of the Opera, Chocolat (also starring Johnny Depp and being about chocolate), and to an extent the “original” film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, making sure the accents of the actors are as randomly mixed and matched as possible to give a unique feeling of the land being untouched by space and time.


2. Why was I constantly reminded of certain key scenes from the psychedelic disco version of Attack of the Clones?


3. What happened to the vermicious knids? Take them away, and you may as well flush the whole film down the toilet. The vermicious knids make the film. I looked forward to their being mentioned, and was most disappointed by their absence.


4. Shouldn't the two films swap titles? Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was clearly all about Charlie, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was clearly about Willy Wonka. They should think about correcting this error.

Aside from that though, the wine was very nice, and I look forward to drinking more of it.