Saturday, April 19, 2014

Easter Question

With tomorrow being Easter, what's your favorite movie or scene in which candy or chocolate plays a key plot role?



I'll start off with Ian Carmichael learning about how the candy snack "Num-Yum" is made, in I'm Alright Jack.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, remade about 10 years ago as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, would be another good choice, being one of those movies I have fond memories of from my childhood, although I don't think I've watched it in 20 years or more.

Buster Keaton tries to buy a box of candies for his girlfriend in Sherlock Jr., only for his rival to buy her an even better box of chocolates. As Tom Hanks says in Forrest Gump, "Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going ot get." But Forrest Gump isn't really about chocolate, and isn't a particular favorite of mine.

There's a small scene involving candy in The Grapes of Wrath that's interesting. Pa Joad (I think; it might be Grandpa Joad) goes into the diner portion of what would now be a big service station, except that they didn't have such big things back in the 1930s, so it's more like the little place in The Petrified Forest. There's a container of candies, and Pa asks if they're penny candies, to buy two for the little ones. Ah, the days when you could get anything for a penny. The woman behind the counter points out that they're actually two for a penny. After he and the kids leave, the truckers ask her what she was doing, since the candies are really a nickel each. They then proceed to remark how crazy these people must be to try to make it across the desert of Arizona in the beat-up truck that they're driving. The scene, like much of the movie, is a bit didactic and blunt -- yes, John Steinbeck, we get the point that the Depression and Dust Bowl did terrible things to the Joads and the rest of the Okies. It's still a damn good movie, however.

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