There are a number of times we wished we could reach inside the screen and snatch a mouth-watering slice of pizza or bowl of macaroni and cheese right out of the protagonists’ hands.
(Additional reporting by Tom Reimann.)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Ah yes, the beloved Roald Dahl movieCharlie and the Chocolate Factory; the film that first warned young children of the many dangers of giving into cardinal sins like gluttony, pride, wrath and watching too much TV. One day, this movie posits, you’ll be arbitrary chosen to enter a reclusive madmen’s warehouse of horrors where your moral failings will be revealed through Rube Goldbergian traps. We’re not entirely convincedWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factorywasn’t a prequel toSaw.
On the plus side…lickable wallpaper?!
Yes, the first promise of the treats that lay in store for Charlie Bucket and his league of future co-defendants seem not merely innocuous, but delightful! As we learn in the opening number, Willy Wonka, or “the candy man” loves sweets so much that before he became a Dr. Monreau-ian hermit presiding over indigenous orange slaves, he even created a line of edible cutlery! How whimsical! As is the edible wallpaper we’re introduced to early in the film, where even the Snozzberries tastes like Snozzberries! What’s a snozzberry? Shut your dumb mouth, Veruca Salt. Just shut it right up.
Sure, it’s easy to make fun of the dark side ofGene Wilder’s titular Candyman: there are memes, internet theories about his bloodlust, and of course,Johnny Depp’s defilement of the character’s memory 34 years later. But there were some genuinely fantastical imagery in this movie that left an indelible impression on anyone who saw it as a child.
Even knowing the dangers of thisHunger Games-esque battlefield designed as a Candyland set, who among us hasn’t dreamt of playing around in the Imagination Room; a giant room in a warehouse with high windows, no exit, but oh my god you can pick GUMMY BEARS off of trees! TREES! Mushrooms have whipped cream in them! Giant rubber balls can be clawed at to reveal gooey chocolate inside! And hey look, there’s a chocolate fountain with absolutely no warning signs or special instructions that in any way imply you shouldn’t feel free to help yourself! Pure imagination, indeed.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
As terrifying as watching children be subjected to the psychedelic nightmare boat ride through a tunnel with chickens getting their heads cut off, nothing could have prepared us for Tim Burton’s 2005 re-imagining of the strange and enigmatic confectioner as aLeaving Neverland-eraMichael Jackson. Why doesCharlie and the Chocolate Factoryexist? For literally no reason except maybe to give us the heads-up that Johnny Depp’s reputation was about to take a single rhinestone glove to the crotch.
However, you’ve got to hand it to Burton, whose previous foray into food art involved re-animated shrimp attempting to drownCatherine O’Hara’s face in a dish of cocktail sauce during a Harry Belefonte number. The origin story of Willy Wonka may have been completely unnecessary, but at least they captured how tantalizing forbidden candy looks to a kid with braces.
Peter Panis a story about a tween vampire who steals children from open windows and offers them the chance to “never, ever grow old” as long they promise to leave their families forever by flying away to “Neverland,” which, let’s be honest, just sounds sketchy ashell. As we confirmed in the movieHook, Peter Pan and his merry band of Lost Boys do not actually subsist on human nourishment. Instead, they imagine food and dine on…well…pure imagination. (Starting to see a theme here?)
However, once grown-up Peter (Robin Williams) actually starts to play along and/or begins to hallucinates from starvation, the perspective shifts and the audience is suddenly presented with is a veritable feast. Not only are there turkeys, pies and steins of what we definitely hope is NOT beer, but all the fruit seems to contain colorful goo the color and consistency of acrylic paint. Toxic? Maybe. But it isindeedmost bangarang.
Like Water for Chocolate
Fair warning for anyone who, like us, assumed this movie was about teen Jesus figuring how to impress his friends before figuring out how to do that thing with the wine:Like Water for Chocolateis a real bummer of a film. Based on Laura Esquivel’s Mexican novel (which she adapted for the screen), the film revolves around a young woman named Tita, who loves two things: cooking and this dude named Pedro. Like in Cinderella, Tita has two mean older sisters and a mother who was consigned her to a life of servitude until her mother dies, so one of her sisters marries Pedro instead while Tita cooks for the extended family.
And from there it’s a pretty straight-forward magical realism narrative wherein Tita’s latent superpowers kick in and she becomes the Empath Chef. Her power can make you eat HER feelings. Cakes are vomited, people burst into flame, and at one point Tita’s sister (spoiler) dies when Tita poisons her by being mad while stirring. More people catch on fire. It’s actually really traumatic. But there’s one great scene where Tita creates rose petal quail sauce that turns everyone very horny (as quail sauce just do sometimes) and only ONE person catches on fire in that scene. We’d totally eat that quail sauce.
Johnny Depp has a beard in this movie and eats strawberries hand-fed to him by Juliet Binoche in this prequel of Tim Burton’sCharlie and the Chocolate Factory. Though it was made in 2000– eight years afterLike Water for Chocolate–Chocolatalso deals in that classic trope, “a small town succumbs to madness due to magic food. This time, it’s horny chocolate, much to the dismay of the town’s pious mayor Alfred Molina, who is observing Lent and goes all John Lithgow inFootlooseabout it.
Johnny Deppshows up as a gypsy,Carrie Anne MossisDame Judi Dench’s uptight daughter and the fire shop does catch on fire thanks to Peter Stormare, who gets hit in the face with a skillet in this feature. But though filled with hijinks, nothing in this movie quite compares to the moment when the Mayor breaks into her kitchen with plans of sabotage only to have a morsel of chocolate hits his lips. Think the scene inRatatouillewhere Anton Ego is reminded of his mother’s confit byaldi…but this is way better, since the food is chocolate and it wasn’t prepared by live vermin.
Pulp Fiction
There are a lot of great food scenes inPulp Fiction. Most people would probably give the gold toSamuel J. Jackson’s Big Kahuna burger monologue (which, to be clear, is thesecondburger monologue inPulp Fiction, a movieQuentin Tarantinomade before realizing he hadn’t eaten in a month.)
Ever since taking a bite of that juicy burger and washing it down with some tasty Sprite, Samuel L. Jackson has become one of those actors who gets to always play himself, so enraptured were we by his ability to make chewing a hamburger seem intimidating.
But if we were picking our favorite food-related scene inPulp Fiction, it would be the movie’sthirdburger scene, with Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and his boss’ wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) eat at the 50s-themed restaurant Jack Rabbit Slims.
This is a magical place where you can order your beef patty bloody and milkshakes cost a mere five dollars, provided you then participate in a stomach-churning dance contest for the amusement of the rest of the diners and Steve Buscemi.
Julie & Julia
Adopted from a Salon blog by Nora Ephron, Julie & Julia tells the story of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who starts her cooking career by challenging herself to make all 524 of Julia Childs’ recipes in 365 days. The narrative of the movie intercuts Powell’s journey with that of Childs (Meryl Streep) when she was starting out in her career.
As you can imagine, there are many cooking and eating scenes in this movie, but none stand out more than Adams’ voiceover extolling the virtues of trans fats while boyfriend played by Chris Messina guzzles hollandaise sauce like a man possessed. “This is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter!” declares Julie, as we watch her literally melt three pounds of it on the stove….ostensibly to fry up Messina now that he’s fattened like a Christmas turkey.
Goodfellas
Martin Scorcese loves to make audiences hungry for Italian food. You might think Goodfellas is a movie about Ray Liotta trying to move up t the local league of Wise Guys while spiraling into a paranoid-fueled drug, murder and extraneous voiceover habit, but did you know it’s also 90 percent about delicious pasta?
One of Goodfella’s more mouth-watering scenes involves, of all things, prison food: when Henry (Ray Liotta) winds up in the clink for holding a gambler at gunpoint. Life in the big house doesn’t seem so bad when you’re hanging with Made Men, however: we learn that some of the perks of paying off the guards includes giant Italian dinners filled with onion-heavy sauce, skillet-fried steak and fresh lobsters. They might have had to slice the onions with razor blades, but somehow, the Goodfellas made do.
