Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Widescreen Special Edition)

This was a favorite of mine growing up, and now my daughter is a fan. She loves the DVD and likes to watch the real actors "all grown up" talking about the making of the movie.

Yeah, yeah, so the enormously talented and amazingly HOT Johnny Depp did a new version of the novel this movie is based on titled "CHARLIE and the Chocolate Factory". Well, I find it creepy and too modernized.

THIS is THE Willy Wonka! Gene Wilder is unbeatable as the quirky, engaging, singing, hermitic, clinically insane candymaker extraordinaire. These oompa-loompas with their green hair, orange faces and clotheshanger-in-the-pants uniforms are the only way to go. And the singing, the routines, it's fantastic! I personally enjoy the colors and the 70's filming techniques used to make this movie. Anyone who was a child in the last 30-some years had to have grown up singing "oompa-loompa, doompa-de-doo, I've got another puzzle for you..." and delighting in the sounds, sights, colors and over-the-top acting of all the brat children.

Everything from the room that gets smaller at one end, to the boatride, even down to the moving-hand coathangers is bright and cheerful even when it's utterly terrifying. And, there are no CG effects to spoil the atmosphere. Face it, the CG in the newer movie is STILL not good enough to be convincing. When you know they were just in front of a greenscreen, the movie is not the same. This movie is authentically cool and nostalgically cheesy in some parts and all the more endearing because of it. Willy Wonka belongs to the time of films when most everything was made by hand and children's films were - at heart - sweet, endearing, family-oriented affairs. Some of my friends and I (we're in our 20's by the way) want to know what happened to such movies as "Willy Wonka", "Hook", and the wonderful, hand-drawn illustrations from films even as recently as "The Little Mermaid" "The Lion King" and "Aladdin" - I grew up on these and am sad everything is so CG and driven by extraordinarily cheap, vulgar humor. And what about fantastically done versions of classic books such as "Black Beauty" "The Secret Garden" and "The Little Princess"? I grew up on those as well and loved them dearly. Or others, like "The Sandlot" and "Angels in the Outfield" - where are these movies today? Why aren't these sorts being made still?

Take my advice - classics like "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" are the kind of movies we need to keep showing our kids, and watching ourselves if only to be reminded what a truly classic children's movie ought to be.

The Easter Bunny brought Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory for my two year old son this year. Now he walks around singing the Umpa Lumpa songs!

An older title, so HD version little better than standard DVD. But, there were NO problems with the HD disc.

Although I enjoyed the Tim Burton version, this film is by far the best version to date! My daughter, age 5, watches this almost on a daily basis. The sets and music are fantastic. I dare you to try and not sing the songs throughout your day! They are infectious. The kids give a wonderful betrayal of "bratty" kids.

The film does make some Hollywood turns that are not in the book, but the major plot and characters remain the same.

Beware for small children! My one complaint is a "psychedelic" scene after the chocolate river encounter when the remaining children take a scary ride on a boat down the river. There are frightening images (chicken getting its head cut off, weird man with snake? crawling over his face) that seem to have zero to do with the plot of the film. I have no idea why this scene is even in the movie. I noticed that when the film is on tv, the station usually cuts out this two minute scene. So keep your fast-forward button handy!