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The Buckets are such friendly people, and seem so good natured about the horrifying squalor around them that you kind of want to punch them in the face – especially when Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) starts singing. That’s right. I basically just advocated theoretical violence against a fictional character who happens to be elderly. That’s because while I’ve said I don’t care for musicals, I’ve also said that I CAN appreciate them, under the right circumstances.

Well, these are not the right circumstances. I’m just going to come out and say that the songs in this movie are flat out terrible. I can’t remember the melody to a single one, except “The Candy Man Can,” but the person I’m hearing in my head is Sammy Davis, Jr. The person singing the song in the film is a terrible singer, just like pretty much everyone else in the cast. By the time we meet the kids, and they start singing, I was already angry at them because I’d had to listen to their parents sing first.

Yes. I became angry at the sound of a child’s voice raised in song. That’s how bad the songs are. Not even the innocent must sing them.

Speaking of the innocent, Charlie really only has one dream in life. Every day on the way home from school he passes Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The facility is locked down and gated, its owner having long since retreated into seclusion. But even though it looks closed, the factory still somehow produces the most beloved chocolates and candies in the world. And the only item on Charlie’s bucket list is to get a look inside.

As luck would have it, Wonka comes out of hiding to announce a contest. Five golden tickets have been randomly placed in Wonka chocolate bars around the world. Whoever finds them will become entitled to an exclusive tour of the factory – the first visitors in years. They’ll get a lifetime supply of chocolate, and a front row seat to the unveiling of Wonka’s newest confection. Apparently this is the chance of a lifetime, and the entire planet goes bonkers over it.

This film exists in a slightly askew, parallel universe that resembles ours, but everything is slightly heightened and stylized. Think the “Muggle” world in Harry Potter. This really is a storybook come to life, so much so that you can almost close your eyes and see the toy version of every character. But there’s a very dark streak of humor here as well. People go bananas over Wonka’s contest the way everyone in our world recently went out of their minds looking for imaginary anime characters in the middle of busy intersections.

Newscasters breathlessly track the progress of the game, at the expense of more important stories. Children turn against their parents. One woman considers giving her husband up to kidnappers rather than surrendering her supply of Wonka bars. It’s dark and funny, but also dry and uneven. It’s humor that makes you kind of short once but rarely actually laugh out loud. The tone bounces between “suitable for kids,” “Arrested Development” and “Salvador Dali fever dream.”

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