moviefreak

This movie is fun and light-hearted and family friendly. It’s not your regular bedtime story movie and I found myself laughing so hard in some parts. My fave character is their pet (which I’m not gonna tell here). I’ll give this movie 7 stars out of 10, because although it’s fun to watch, I think watching it once is enough he he…

The Story:

Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) works as a handyman in Barry Nottingham’s (Richard Griffiths) mega hotel. The hotel used to be Skeeter’s dad’s and it used to be just a small modest hotel, but Barry Nottingham managed to persuade him to sell the hotel to him. He even promised to make Skeeter a manager of his new hotel in the same location. For years and years Skeeter works diligently in the hotel as he waits for the time when he’ll become the manager in the hotel. However, Barry has chosen his daughter’s boyfriend named Kendall (Guy Pearce) to run a new hotel that he’s going to build.

Meanwhile, Barry’s sister Wendy (Courteney Cox) has lost her job, so she has to go on a job interview in another city. So she leaves her kids Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) and Bobbi (Laura Ann Kesling) in the care of Skeeter and Wendy’s friend, Jill (Keri Russell). Skeeter then makes up bedtime stories with the kids every night they are in his care.

The stories the kids make up turn out to be true in real life - well, in a way. So Skeeter tries hard to make the kids create stories in which he becomes the winner, because he knows that in real life it’ll come true, as well. In fact, because of the kids’ stories, Barry Nottingham actually gives Skeeter a chance to compete with Kendall to be a manager of the new hotel he’s going to build. In the contest, the winner is the one who gives the best idea on the hotel’s overall theme.

However, what he doesn’t know is that the location of the hotel is actually the school where Patrick and Bobbi go to. The same school that Jill is working at. So Barry has pulled some strings to make the government official sign some papers that enables him to destroy the school in order to make his mega hotel. Meanwhile, Skeeter finds himself feeling attracted to Jill as time goes by.

Will Skeeter be successful in winning the contest? What will happen to the hotel and the school? Will Skeeter have a relationship with Jill?

Spoiler:

Skeeter won the contest, but he managed to ruin his possible career by ruining Barry’s birthday party. Why? He thought he was going to be on fire (due to the kids’ story), so when Barry was about to blow the many candles on his huge birthday cake, Skeeter put down all the candles with a fire extinguisher. He gets fired right away.

Meanwhile, Jill is angry at Skeeter because she thinks that he knows that the new hotel’s location is the school she works in. The kids are also angry at him because of the same reason. Now Skeeter has to think of something to make it all right again.

So Kendall is in charge of the hotel again and he is about to have it demolished, but Skeeter saves the school on time. First he goes to meet his ex-school friend who works in the government office and they manage to make a deal. The deal is that the school stays as is, but Barry can make his hotel near a beach. Barry agrees to this deal.

Then Skeeter decides to open his own modest hotel and named it after his dad. Jill now accepts him as her boyfriend. Kendall gets fired and he now works as a servant in Skeeter’s hotel. Happy ending.

Yep, though this movie was released in 2005, I only saw it two nights ago on TV he he he…For some weird reason, I thought it would be boring. I’m glad I was wrong. It’s actually pretty fascinating and interesting to see. I’ve never read Roald Dahl’s books, so I knew nothing about the story. For the imaginative world created in the movie and the WONDERFUL performance7.1 stars by Johnny Depp, I’ll give this movie a out of 10.

The Story:

Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) is a poor child with a good heart. He lives with his parents and two sets of grandparents. One grandpa once worked in The Chocolate Factory, the biggest chocolate factory in the world. Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) is the man who owned the factory. Willy Wonka creates many different kinds of best-selling chocolate that his competitors get jealous. They send spies to the factory to steal his recipes. After a while, other factories start selling chocolate using his recipes and Willie Wonka decides to close his factory forever.

However, a few years has passed and there’s been some activity in the factory, though nobody has been seen entering or coming out of the place. Then Willy Wonka decides to give 5 lucky kids a chance to get inside his factory and one of them is promised a GRAND PRIZE. 

Charlie is lucky enough to be one of them. Each child has to be escorted by an adult and Charlie is escorted by his grandpa who once worked in the factory. Other children who get the golden ticket are: Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiergratz), and Violet Beuragarde (AnnaSophia Robb). All the other kids are “brats”. Veruca is totally spoiled by her parents, Mike loves playing video games and he’s obnoxious, Augustus loves eating too much sweet stuff, whereas Violet is a nasty girl who loves chewing gum and hates losing. 

When Willy Wonka takes them inside the factory, they see a whole new world inside. The kind of world that looks like in a fairy tale. There’s a HUGE chocolate waterfall and everything in the beautiful garden-like world can be eaten, including the grass. One by one the kids are challenged to beat their weaknesses as they’re taken into a tour around the factory. In the factory there’s also the cute Oompa-Loompas (tiny fellows who work in the factory). 

I bet you know who the winner of the grand prize is, but what is the grand prize? What kind of challenges are there in the factory?

Here’s the trailer:

Notes:

1. It’s hard to describe the kind of factory it is, but I LOVE the fantasy world created in the movie, so this movie is recommended if you want to watch a family/fantasy movie. 

2. I was TOTALLY impressed by Johnny Depp in this movie. It’s as if I saw somebody else as Willy Wonka. He plays his character VERY well. Applause for him!!!

3. I took a peek at the ending of Roald Dahl’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and found some differences from the movie. I guess it’s just normal as many movies aren’t portrayed exactly the same as the original books/stories.

Saw this 2007 movie on TV last night. It was okay and funny in some parts, but for some reason it’s hard for me to feel “enchanted” by this movie. Maybe it’s because I’m not the type of person who likes the combination of cartoon and real life. It just seems too hard to believe. If I want to watch fairy tales, I’ll watch pure fairy tales movies.

I do appreciate the writer’s effort in trying to “change” a fairy tale character to be more real in terms of relationship (by teaching her to date and get to know the spouse first before “meeting a prince for a day and then get married the next day” and telling her that relationship is HARD WORK) and a real life character to believe in love more and to give love another chance (that even a-soon-to-be-divorced couple can find sparks in their love life again and cancel the divorce), but I don’t think I want to watch this movie again. Once is enough. That’s why I’ll only give this movie a 6.5 stars out of 10.

However, I think Amy Adams fits her character well as Giselle. At least I find her truly believable. I think the cutest character in the story is Pip, the chipmunk. I WISH he would come out more often HE HE HE HE…

The Story:

Giselle (Amy Adams) lives in a cartoon land and she sings about meeting the prince of her dreams, someone to love and to live with happily ever after. A troll comes into her house to eat her and Prince Edward (James Marsden) comes to the rescue. They agree to get married the next day, so the next day Giselle comes to the castle wearing a beautiful wedding gown and tiara. She makes dresses herself with the help of animals. However, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) doesn’t like it since she doesn’t want anyone to be a queen. She wants to stay as the queen, so she disguises herself as an old woman who tries to entice Giselle to come to a wishing waterfall. Then once she gets closer to the waterfall, Queen Narissa pushes her down so that she would come to earth as a living being, a place where “happily ever after” doesn’t exist.

The confused Giselle doesn’t know what to do. She has never seen a car in her entire life and she comes out of the gutter in the middle of a busy road. She tries to find the castle to get married to Prince Edward. Then Morgan Philip (Rachel Covey), the daughter of Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) notices her and they bring her home since she’s soaking wet. They finally let her spend a night there and the next morning when she wakes up, Giselle sings and invites many animals to help her clean up Robert’s apartment.

Innocent Giselle makes Robert worried. He thinks that she is a crazy woman. She keeps talking about marrying Prince Edward and that he is coming to rescue her. Robert doesn’t believe that at all. Meanwhile, Giselle keeps on making new dresses from Robert’s curtains and carpets (this is hilarious!!!). Robert tries to put some sense into Giselle’s head by telling her that she can’t marry a person she doesn’t know, a person whom she has just met for a day. In real life, a couple needs to date and get to know each other first. So Robert teaches Giselle “the ways of the world”, whereas Giselle tries to make Robert believe in “giving love another chance”. One time Robert brings Giselle to his office (he’s a lawyer) and there Giselle manages to bring a couple back together, though they almost got divorced.

Trouble comes when Robert’s longtime girlfriend Nancy Tremaine (Idina Menzel) finds Giselle in Robert’s apartment (whereas she’s never been allowed to spend a night there yet), so Nancy is angry with him. Giselle helps Robert make up with Nancy by making a wreath out of fresh flowers and she sends two doves to send the wreath to Nancy. She has also secretly slips two tickets of a dance along with the wreath. Of course Nancy is very happy now and she forgives Robert.

True as her prediction, Prince Edward comes down to earth to find his true love along with Pip (a cartoon chipmunk who’s Giselle’s best friend, but in real world Pip can’t speak properly like in the cartoon land). Queen Narissa sends Nathaniel (Timothy Spall), who’s actually in love with the queen, to stop the prince from ever finding Giselle. She also gives him 3 poisoned apples to kill her.

Will Prince Edward be able to find Giselle? How will he find her in a big city like New York? Will there be a “happily ever after”? Expect some twists at the end!!!