Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: 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, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.

Like all the best and most beloved family films, there's plenty in this film for adults to appreciate as well as kids.

Roald Dahl's immortal, sugar-coated morality play finds Gene Wilder as disturbing and fault-ridden but compelling as the book described. Okay, so its pacing may be slightly off (taking nearly 40 minutes to arrive at the factory gates), but this is still a Golden Ticket if ever there was one.

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

Adapted (with some changes) by Roald Dahl from his famous children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka creates a marvelous world as close to heaven as any kid can imagine and never talks down to its young audience. The film is sometimes dark in its tone but by the end (when Wonka's motives and true nature are revealed) it is fabulously uplifting.