When I was just starting school (about 6 years of age), my teacher would read us Roald Dahl every day. We got through the BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory... any others I don't remember. Which tells you that reading to six-year-olds is something that stays with them forever. And also, don't expect them to forget the nasty pranks the Twits played on each other. (Oh! We also read The Witches, which really horrified me at the time. Children turned into mice - awful!) But nevertheless I really enjoyed that peek into the world of literature. Really good stories that you could get your teeth into. I graduated to Enid Blyton after that, but it took me some years before I rediscovered Roald Dahl, when I stumbled across... that book - the girl's name started with M, dammit... Margaret? Crap, I'll have to look it up now. How very annoying. Aaah... Matilda!

I recently saw a very bad remake, called Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on e-tv, the South African free-to-air channel, which is the only non-Public Broadcast one, too. We have M-Net, our only pay channel, and the three SABC channels, which can be quite grim in the level of repeats they offer - and the quality of 'home-grown' drama and comedy, which is abysmal. Unfortunately, unless you want to pay a thousand bucks to install satellite TV, and then 400 bucks a month, it's all you're stuck with (in Rands, I know, but if you're actually earning rands it's a lot - for the amount in dollars, divide by six, I think. Incidentally, it's one rand, two rand, three rand - you don't usually speak of them in the plural - like 'sheep').

In this remake, Willie Wonka (oooh, what a Freudian name that is...!) was played by Gene Wilder, and it must have been late '60s, or early '70s, judging from the eyeliner and the psychadelic Oompa-Loompa song and dance sequences with all that trippy writing on the screen to echo the lyrics. I felt sorry for the Oompa-Loompa actors, who were all about three feet high and heavily made up like French aristocrats before the guillotine (complete with wigs and orange eyebrows) and wearing ugly sailor-suits with bloody stupid white jodhpurs all baggy round the hips. You could see them battling to keep a straight face (all the stiffening greasepaint probably helped a lot with that) while singing asinine songs about how wicked the other children were. Gene Wilder was heavily painted (or heavily tanned, I couldn't tell. I can only pick up e-tv on the UHF band on our little black-and-white TV) and the whites of his eyes were surrounded by enough eyeliner to supply Nefertiti for life. He creeped me out, like clowns in whiteface always do. You never can tell what they're thinking. But I wasn't impressed by the way he made Willie Wonka out to be totally off his rocker instead of just eccentric. And there was no mention of the "squares that look round", either (having had the book read to me, I'm allowed to quibble about silly things like that).

Was it in Witches Abroad or Lords and Ladies, that Nanny Ogg remembers she should never trust a dog with orange eyebrows? (I have no clue why).

The factory itself wasn't really up to scratch - even in black and white, you can see the river of chocolate is just water dyed brown. (The brown bit's another assumption). The children squealed too much, and Wilder mutters and twirls and rolls his eyes like an idiot-savant with a life-time's supply of LSD. It looks like the kind of mess that any of the actors would have to drink an awful lot of strong liquor to forget. (They say most of the actors who played the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz were always getting drunk between takes. I can't remember where I saw that, but it was probably in a David Niven book, or some sort of retrospective on TV, maybe about the kid who played 'Buckwheat').

The kid who played Charlie was some sort of little blond thug with the biggest square jaw I've ever seen. His "grandfather", who has spent however many years in bed, jumps up and starts doing dance routines five seconds later, but Charlie manages to be the most irritating twerp in the room even so. High pitched little voice, potty-helmet hairstyle and big sad eyes. I thought, "Man, you're gonna grow up to be ugly." He probably already has. Now he's like, forty, and still hasn't lived this cringe-a-minute movie down. It's the kind of thing you watch when there's nothing else on, and yet there is this growing sense of fascinated horror... how much more politically incorrect can it get? Oh well, at least the set designers had fun with the giant mushrooms and the candy-cane trees. I know I did. It reminded me of those bad trippy seventies movies Nigella Lawson is always on about. (Although she's usually on about seventies porn movies, and how she feels like she's in one whenever she eats an ice-cream cone. Freaky. I'll never look at ice-cream the same way again now. Stupid woman).

Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka is bound to be full of laughs; after all, this is the guy who based his character in Pirates of the Caribbean on Keith Richards. (Actually, Terry Pratchett based his Death of the Discworld on Keith Richards to a degree: in Soul Music Colon says Death "sounds like a Keith". This is really because everyone thinks that Keith looks like Death. Although Death probably really sounds like James Earl Jones, although I dunno how much an abstract personification can sound like James Earl Jones...).

Johnny Depp is brilliant. I couldn't help noticing the way he pastiched Michael Jackson most of the time... He managed to make himself look completely alien and very, very strange with little extra effort. His consummate mastery of mimicry of all kinds is astounding. He even does casual impressions of the other characters and makes it look effortless, even when he has them nailed, from accent to mannerism. But the little high-pitched voice was pure Michael Jackson. I giggled, I confess it... I was waiting for him to say "I love you." Creepy...

Even more creepy was finding Wonka gobstoppers in the sweet shop. I thought about those itty-bitty oompa-loompa hands and shuddered. "Carneys... circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage... small hands...". Yes, Austin Powers. Sorry 'bout that.

The new oompa-loompa concept was insanely funny. One person, endlessly replicated, and a very weird person at that. Apparently his name is Deep Roy. Interesting. But creepy. Especially "Doris". Doris the secretary was the worst. Glasses with a chain, a big blue-rinsed wig, and a cardigan. Actually, Deep Roy pops up everywhere, and does dance routines with himself. I liked the zooty tracksuits, and you can see him trying to keep a straight face while banging the drum in the big swan-shaped galley while all his clones row. It must be fun to be able to make fun of yourself like that - I hear he was Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The child who plays Charlie is a much better choice in this movie - he can actually act. With a serious face, dimply little chin and honest ears, he's likeable and serious at the same time, playing the straight man to Depp's antics. I was impressed with Helena Bonham-Carter's teeth. And the grandparents were endearing, especially Uncle Joe. Everything in the movie is endearingly wacky, from the characters in the bed in Charlie's house to the humour. All in all an excellent movie, highly enjoyable.