Chiming in

OK, now that comments onCharlie & the Chocolate Factory have been posted by Ang (loved it), Franklin (hated it), and Loopy (mostly just talked about Johnny Depp, so what else is new), I'll add my two cents (no spoilers). That's all I've got, tho, because the film just didn't get me too exercised, either pro or con.

Let me just preface this by saying that I know I have a reputation for taking things too seriously, being too easily offended, and getting too politically hyped up about movies (no, really?). So I really try to take myself with a grain of salt. But after Franklin pointed out the exaggeratedly stereotypical "sissy" men walking dogs, I felt slightly more justified (as Franklin is not one to over-react) in being really offended at the following.

Charlie is explaining how pictures get sent through the air to a TV set, and then says something like, "so if you can do that with a picture, why not with a big ol' chocolate bar?" and the TV turns on and it's Oprah. I was a bit taken aback but still trying not to over-react, but then the channel flips and it's a bunch of apes hopping around.

I spent the next ten minutes first trying to decide if that was some kind of coincidence, but that seems impossible with a guy as detail-oriented as Tim Burton, and then trying to figure out if Burton was just being out-and-out racist—is he actually equating Oprah, a chocolate bar, and a bunch of apes?—or if there was supposed to be some more subtle ironic edge there somehow.

But I decided, no, there's a limit to "subtle ironic edge" after which it just becomes out-and-out racist, regardless of the director's intentions.

It sometimes seems that people think that just saying/showing something "politically incorrect" is automatically funny. But that's no more automatically funny than a fart joke, and just as childish. And potentially far more damaging.

That last sentence strikes me as "hysterical liberal" sounding. But as I have to run just now, I'm gonna let it sit there and see what I think of it later.