Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

"Great fun, with Wilder for once giving an impeccably controlled performance as the factory's bizarre owner."

"An okay family musical fantasy..."

"(Gene Wilder is) a wonderful actor quite capable of hitting Dahl’s ambivalences (and he has a lovely entrance), but Stuart’s clunky stop-and-start pace and sketchy tone give him nowhere to go."

"Willy Wonka creates a marvelous world as close to heaven as any kid can imagine and never talks down to its young audience."

"Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds..."

"The casting of Gene Wilder in the title role is the key: there is a crazed, yet knowing, glint in his eye that suggests the world of corporate confectionery is more sillier and sinister than we will ever know."