Finally caught Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today. Katie had seen it  a month ago, but this was our first chance to take Joseph, who has been talking about this movie for..a month.

Here’s what I thought: Echoing the opinions of some reviewers I’ve read – the first half hour was lovely and almost perfect. That is – the part of the movie that takes place before they go to the chocolate factory. The sense of iron-strong family ties, respect, good cheer in rough circumstances was well done and charming. Even moving. But then…

Well, the rest of it was just passably okay. I thought the decision to give Willie Wonka a sad family backstory was awful and rather contrary to the Dahl ethos. The Oompa-Loompa songs, while lyrically faithful to Dahl, were musical wreckage. The whole thing had a rather rushed, "We all know what happens, so let’s get through it" feeling. Depp was odd, but then he was supposed to be, and I must say that he didn’t remind me, as some have commented, of Michael Jackson. The best thing about that last 2/3 was Deep Roy, who, thanks to digital miracles, played all of the Ooompa-Loompas, and with great aplomb and visual wit.

Although he couldn’t quite capture the nuances of our own favorite Oompa-Loompa, Miss Catherine, who took the role in a 2000 (I think) production at the Pied Piper Theater in Lakeland, Fl. Boy, was that an experience. Thanks to that, I have all of the Oompa-Loompa songs still stuck in my head: Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop! That great big greedy nincompoop…even after all these years. She had to to sing them over and over and over, and at the top of her lungs. She remarked today that she didn’t remember the tune. I said it didn’t matter. The director had them basically screaming them to the point that they were tuneless, anyway.

But you know what? The theater was like a 90-second drive from my house, in this fantastic neighborhood, and she had a great time. Ritual, bi-monthly, nostalgic-for-Florida sigh.

I also couldn’t get that damn DirectTV NFL package commercial out of my head during the first part of the movie, with Jeff Garlin (of Curb Your Enthusiasm), Peyton Manning, Dick Butkus and others marching around a neighborhood singing, "I’ve got a golden ticket!" (to the tune of the song in the first movie), which in this case, isn’t for a chocolate factory, but for 5 months of solid football coverage. Yay.

Oh, and Joseph?

He sat motionless through the whole darn movie (which is more than I can say for his baby brother), but then responded to my query as to whether he liked it with a firm, "No."

I have no idea why. Maybe he didn’t like the arc of the second and third acts either.