Thoughts Unlimited

Just now I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and surprisingly enough, I've got more to say about the audience than the movie.

Basically I took advantage of the offer the school presented us, and I got 3 tickets. I watched it at Tampines Mall, and boy, was it swarming with people. Anyway, I think most of us here has read the book at some point or another of our (be it sad or not) lives, and therefore we pretty much know what's going to happen. It tends to be like that with movie adaptations of books. (Oh no, RS is back to haunt me.)

And speaking of movies which are adapted from books, another thing is that the movie kinda destroys your little dream fantasy world which you imagined after reading the book. I know for one that my imaginary chocolate factory world was way cooler than that presented in the movie.

And Willy Wonka so did not look the way he did in the movie. That haircut! The sunglasses! Argh!

Okay, fine, I know that in my little dream world things don't cost money and anything's possible, but I really think that with a movie budget of millions and millions of (American) dollars, they could have at least done slightly better with the set.

Oh yeah, I still haven't gotten over Johnny Depp not looking like Johnny Depp. Seriously, I wouldn't have guessed it was him unless I knew in advance. And anyway when I did know in advance, I had to stare at the picture for a long time and slowly convince myself that it was indeed Johnny Depp.

Basically I think the show goes beyond just its surface of a lucky boy, a slightly eccentric chocolate genius and a chocolate factory. It's about childhood innocence which is lost, and I guess that doesn't really qualify it as a kids movie. Kids are kids. They aren't old enough to understand lost innocence. Because they are most probably innocent themselves. Sheesh, here I go again feeling old.

Okay, now to the point about the audience.

Firstly, if I ever have children of my own, I am not going to bring them to a movie theatre until they are old enough to learn that a movie is meant to be watched in peace without irritating questions and running commentaries.

Why I say this is because today in the theatre it was something like this. on the left there is a young couple out on a date. On the right there is my bro and my mum. On the row above me is a dad, and a couple of kids. Seated on the row below me is another family with another bunch of (slightly older, maybe 9 or 10) kids. In general, the kids spell disaster.

The girl sitting behind me was probably about 6 or 7. She spent the whole movie asking questions like:

Why is that man so sad?
How come she cannot eat that?
What did he say? Charlie what?
I don't understand (insert anything).

I think I can still forgive her. She's like 7.

But the kid in front, cannot be forgiven. That boy was at least 10. And, he probably thought that he was smarter than Mike Teevee. That smart-aleck had Mike's attitude. Yes, I know you read the book when you were 7, I know you know every last detail....

In a nutshell, the boy in front gave a running commentary on the movie. And, he would say things like oh, there's no golden ticket. Oh, this and this is going to happen. I know that because I read the book blah blah blah.

I mean, okay, you read the book. Guess what? At least half the cinema has read the book too! Wow! Even if you have read the book and you are a self-proclaimed expert on it, you don't have to let the whole cinema know by telling everyone what's going to happen next. It so totally spoils the movie. It's not fun anymore.

As the movie was an adaptation, not a straight direct copy of the book, there were minor changes here and there. Those were some sort of saving grace. Mr Smart Aleck would shoot off that blah blah blah is going to happen, and then, blah blah blah wouldn't happen! Because it's a movie, for goodness sake. You can't follow the book word for word. If you did, you'd be in the cinema until Wednesday.

When Mr Smart Aleck's prediction turned out wrong you could almost hear people go "see you idiot, you aren't that smart after all". But then Mr Smart Aleck would then go on into a monologue in defence, and it was just bad.

I think if I wasn't with my family I would have seriously told the boy to shut up.

After the movie, I went to eat ice cream. While waiting, there were these two girls, whose favourite words were evidently OH MY GOD!

Their conversation while pasing the ice cream stall went something like:

Girl 1: Oh my god! Look at the ice cream!
Girl 2: Oh my god! The amount of cream!
Girl 1: Yeah, oh my god, the scoop is like, so big!
Girl 2: Hey, look at this flavour. Oh my god! It's strawberry cheescake yoghurt! That's like......
Girl 1: Yeah! Oh my god, I can't believe people want to eat this.
Girl 2: Look at the price! Oh my god!

They seemed unable to puncuate their sentences with normal puncuation marks like full stop and commas. Instead, they used exclamation marks and OH MY GOD!

Oh my god, were they irritating. And, as a sidenote, they weren't exactly the most petite people I've seen around.

I think I should elaborate more on National Day celebrations in school now.

So, there were celebrations in school, which were held in the hall because it rained! Thankfully also, because otherwise we would have been soaked (in the merciless rays of the sun).

But there was one small trade off. The lack of air. The hall officially has no ventilation.

And if the National Day committee wants to do anything to change National Day besides changing the hall (which is next to impossible, I know), they could also possibly look at not letting the Sec 1s do any more skits. In fact, if they didn't do any at Racial Harmony Day and the likes, we might just enjoy it better.

I'm Sec 4 already, and I'll be leaving the school soon. Just imagining that we're leaving the school in the hands of such people like the Sec 1s, sends shudders down to our socks, no matter how low they may be. The school is going to fall into disarray and become a sad, sad place.

Then again, maybe they're Sec 1s, so we should give them a bit of chance and room to move. But too much room isn't good either, is it?

Oh, right now looking at the title, it reminds me that zup's father-in-law has a chocolate factory! How cool is that?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 08, 2005 at 11:18 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.