I recently read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as you know. So, I figured I ought to read the sequel, as it picks up exactly after the first book ends, and I’d always wondered (when watching the movie) exactly what happens after that elevator shoots out the roof. (And wondered why Hollywood, which is so desperately enamored of sequels, hasn’t ever tried to turn this into a movie.)
Well, it readily became apparent why it was never sequelized by Hollywood… because it isn’t very good. In fact, it’s straight-up bad. (There are some spoilers below, but I’ll keep the ending a secret… not that it’s a very good or interesting secret, but if you’re wanting to read it, I won’t ruin it for you…)
They shoot out of the roof, they go too far, they have some brief adventures orbiting earth (followed by an entire chapter which seems to be a satire of American politics — a topic all children love, as you know); avoid space aliens; go back to the chocolate factory; experience some conflict based on Charlie’s awful grandparents continuing to be lazy and awful — and then the ending (I won’t spoil for you) happens, and it ends just as abruptly as the first book.
It’s a mess.
The three things that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has going for it are a) a clear plot, b) a fun setting, and c) a clear moral.
ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE ABSENT IN THIS BOOK.
Stuff happens in it — and that’s all you can really say. What was the point? Old people are awful? It has the feeling of a book that was written because it was demanded by a publisher — not because the author was particularly inspired.
It wasn’t much longer than the first book — which took me maybe a couple hours to read — but this took me more than two weeks to finish reading because I simply wasn’t enjoying it. It was dull and obnoxious, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
I can’t even tell you to read this book if you’re interested to find out what happened after the other story — because “they aimlessly goofed around for a while, everybody acted kind of like a jerk except for Charlie who stood meekly in the corner” is not a story. It’s not even a good ‘continuation’ or ‘revisiting’. I mean, what does anybody want out of a sequel to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”? They want more chocolate factory is what they want — we needed to pick up with Charlie’s first day on the job, and the problems he runs into (not Oompa Loompa labor strikes or the inevitable lawsuits from the other children who went on the factory tour — but fun, fanciful problems, like going on their own safari to source new flavors for candies, or creating something like a fruit-leather kite which turns out to attract whangdoodles and hornswogglers, the deadly enemies of the Oompa Loompas… And it all needs to be firmly wrapped around specific “moral of the story” moments, like the first book was.
I understand if Roald Dahl felt like, as an author, he had tapped out the whole concept of the chocolate factory and he just didn’t have more to write about it. FINE. But if that’s the case, DON’T WRITE A SEQUEL. (Of course, authors write for a living, so it’s possible he just needed the money to buy food. I get this. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth reading.)
It’s not worth reading.
The End. – UH
40 Books This Year 