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CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR
Author: Dahl, Roald
Review Date: AUGUST 01, 2005
Publisher:Knopf
Publication Date: 09/01/1972
Category: FICTION
Classification: FEATURE
Editor's note: Now that 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' has taken in a delicious estimated $148.1 million at the box office in its first three weeks of release, what's next for Mr. Wonka? His creator, Roald Dahl, followed up 'Chocolate,' in 1972, with the confectionary sequel 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,' not quite as appetizing a title. Kirkus was not impressed with the Knopf release, as you'll see ("With humor that depends on gratuitous references to the President's pottie or the results of a very strong laxative..."--and not in a good way), but that's certainly never halted production of a sequel, especially for one whose predecessor is about to hit the coveted $200 million mark. Just some Hollywood speculation on our part. The Kirkus review in full:
"In a perfectly silly and pointlessly tastless sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. Willie Wonka's glass elevator goes into orbit carrying Charlie, his parents, his grandparents, and the bed that three of the grandparents haven't left for 20 years.
"They stop at a new U.S. Space Hotel causing panic back at the White House, where an illiterate President who tells knock-knock jokes thinks they are Martians and a broad-typed Chief of the Army wants to blow them up "crash bang wallop bang-bang-bang-bang-bang." But when a horde of greenish, shapeless creatures called "vermicious knids" starts emerging from the space hotel's elevators, the humans hop back to earth in their knid-proof glass one, towing a crew of terrified astronauts along. In the reaches of space fiction where anything goes, Mr. Dahl's inventions are old hat, and about all that ensues back at the factory is the grandparents' excessive rejuvenation (one of them is even "minused"), overcompensating aging, and Ultimate return to the status quo ante by swallowing alternate doses of Vita-Wonk and Wonka-Vite. They are finally lured from their beds by an invitation from the White House (a reward for rescuing the astronauts) and even Charlie himself exits dancing with glee, never questioning the privilege involved in visiting those previously caricatured idiots.
"With humor that depends on gratuitous references to the President's pottie or the results of a very strong laxative, with the Oompa-Loompas still fetching and carrying, this has all the faults that disturbed grown-ups and none of the inspired outrageousness that attracted children to its predecessor."
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Copyright 2005 Kirkus Reviews
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 | Talk Like a Man: Robert B. Parker Tribute
January 15, 2010 - I still remember the first time I heard Spenser's voice ring out in the opening chapter of The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), as he razzes the college president who's trying to hire him. What's this guy's problem? I thought. Why does he have such an attitude? The attitude, I soon learned, had deep roots...Part of it was a temperamental similarity to Spenser's creator, Robert B. Parker, who died on Jan. 18th at age 77.
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