Where Roald Dahl and Mel Stuart ended their stories of Charlie’s inheritance of the chocolate factory, director Craig Singer and writer Robert Dean Klein, along with a host of able actors, take the next logical step. Cynicism. Anger. Places and emotions that Dahl would have gone had he been this low down and this damn funny. 25 years have passed since Charlie got Wonka’s factory and it’s not going at all well. The Oompa-Loompas were fired, one of them forced to sit on the sidewalk, holding up a sign, “Will Blend Confection for Food.” Wonka doesn’t give a chocolate-coated fart about it. He did his time as a candy maven. Now he spends his days on Loompaland Island, being massaged by the female form of the Oompa-Loompas he harbored in his factory. No Wangdoodles or Snozzwangers here.
And the kids. Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde, Veruca Salt, and Mike Teavee want revenge on the now greedy and uncaring Charlie. In fact, both Singer and Klein make a good point here, besides the appearance by Mr. Jopec (Edmund Lyndeck) in a “Citizen Kane” inspired interview. Any number of influences shape lives. Someone can grow up under the best of care, even in the poorest circumstances. But one act, one event, one temptation can turn a person elsewhere from the good they are, to inheriting the blackest of hearts. In essence, the kids, now adults, do have their right to get back at Charlie. After all, Veruca has become a hooker. It gets even funnier in this trailer-formed short film and trust this fully; you haven’t seen everything until you’ve seen the part where an Oompa-Loompa curses out a guy on the street who jokes at them, “What’s the matter guys? A little short?” Amazingly, the costumes are very nearly the same as the original film. This is indeed one of very few inspired shorts to continue a well-known motion picture, and a wicked pre-show to the new Tim Burton production.
