Ah yes, it's good to be home.  Last week I was watching my aunt's house, located somewhere in the Land of the Lost, and the week before, I was in good ol' bible readin' and animal killin' country.  At last I have returned, so let's get back to some good, topical, hard hitting, thought provoking, intelligent discussion.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is one of the greatest films of all time.  This is not an easy statement to make, given that I'm A) an adult, and 2) a male.  But dammit, I will not compromise my journalistic integrity, mainly because I have none.  It's a great film.  You watch it as a kid and it's a funny movie with silly people and funny songs.  Then, you watch it as an adult and you see more...much more.  Well, no you don't, but shit on it, it's still a good movie.

Willy Wonka, evidently the only candy manufacturer in the known galaxy, decides to hold a contest to give away a lifetime supply of chocolate from his factory, which has been locked up and closed to the public for decades, or maybe a few days, I don't remember that part very well.  To determine the winners of the contest, Slick Willy puts five golden tickets into his various candy bars.  Within moments, a frenzy takes over the world.  Everyone's afraid they'll catch botulism from having the golden tickets touching the chocolate.  Or maybe it was that everyone wants these tickets, despite the fact that you could just as easily go to a store and buy a candy bar, so what the hell's so great about getting one for free?  I guess they're more excited about the thought of getting in and looking at all of his many secrets.  Apparently this place is like Castle Greyskull and the public is Skeletor.  So the story chronicles the five winners, who just so happen to be five totally unique children.  And just who are those children?  I'm glad you asked.  Wait a minute, I asked...

The winner of the first ticket, Augustus, is a big, fat, gluttonous hog of a pig.  He's glad he won because it means he can feast like a slob forever on the chocolates of Mr. Wonka.  Unfortunately for Augustus, in the inventing room, he falls into the river of chocolate (churned by a waterfall, the only way to get it just right).  The river filters up through gigantic tubes and down into the fudge room, where Augustus becomes a yummy Wonka Chocolate Lard Bar.

A snotty, spoiled, stuck up English girl.  Oops, I guess I could have just said "an English girl," Veruca locates the second ticket.  Determined to have things her way all the time, Veruca demands that Will-o-matic give her one of his giant golden geese.  As it turns out, she doesn't get one.  Instead, she falls down the trash chute into the incinerator.  No loss there.

Violet gets the third ticket, and though she admits she hates candy and mostly only chews gum, she wanted to win the contest just to show up her, to use a direct quote, "asswipe ho-bitch friend Cornelia."  But that gun chewing habit proves mighty fatal in the end.  Violet swipes a piece of Will-town's brand new three course meal gum and chews it.  Unfortunately, when she gets to the blueberry pie, she turns into a gigantic blueberry herself.  She is taken to the juice room and squeezed back to normal.

What a loser!  Mike Teevee just sits around and watches TV all day long.  I mean, who would do that?  Wait a minute, don't answer that.  Mike meets with a difficult end when he goes into the Wonkavision studio.  The special camera doesn't just project images onto the small screen, it actually shrinks them down to size.  Mike's shrunken and has to be stretched via the toffee puller to get back to normal size.

Charlie's the main character.  After spending much of the first act moping and whining and crying and bitching, Charlie wins the final ticket, which is great because it means he'll finally shut his damn trap.  But, Charlie steals some Fizzy Lifting Drinks, which in some way make you float around and do flips and have really obvious harness wires attached to you.  When Willville hear about this, he gives Charlie the scolding of a lifetime.

The Oompa Loompas, from Loompaland, are Will-n-stein's cheap slave labor that he keeps locked up in a cave until they're needed to do his work or remove the carcass of mischievous children.  At least they have fun.  Why, with each dead kid, they sing a happy little fun song which insults them!  What could be more fun than dancing on someone's grave?  And who the hell dreamed up these guys anyway?  Orange midgets with green hair?  PizzleWig Almighty, this movie alone may explain my years and years of heavy drinking.  I'm starting to think this may be the next Drug Movie over at BigMeats.

Of course, then there's Willy himself.  A sly devil who's constantly quoting bizarre lines from literary sources, breaking into song, and placing the lives of everyone around him in grave peril.  Though I have no official source on this, it's highly likely that he is in fact Satan.

Sluggworth contacts each child and informs them that if they can procure Wonka's Everlasting Gobstopper he'll pay them seventy billion dollars or so.  Sluggworth needs to rethink that plan, because the Gobstopper can only mean financial ruin for Willyboy.  Setting aside the fact that it's the size of a softball so no kid could ever eat it, it lasts forever.  That means you have only one sale ever.  Not a good marketing strategy, if you asked me.

These people look like plague victims who just took a Napalm Shower.  Gadzooks, this family's depressing.  No wonder Charlie's so deperate to get out.

So how does it turn out in the end?  Well, I'm not going to tell you, you'll just have to see it for yourself.  This is mainly because I've never seen the movie all the way through.  I'm usually shivering and rocking back and forth before it concludes.  However, I'm pretty sure it involves a muscle bound martial artist defeating the vampire terrorists.  I think Mr. T's seen the ending though, I wonder what he thinks of the film.

- Danimal