Lots of flashing lights and pretty colors, not much else

Rating: 4/10 (25 July 2005)

I wasn't too happy when I heard that Tim Burton was remaking WILLY WONKA, or should I say, re-adapting Roald Dahl's book CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and the initial previews didn't make me feel any better. But, I went to see it with an open mind, and was pleasantly surprised.
At first.
The first twenty minutes are great. The introduction of all the characters is often hilarious, even surpassing the original movie at times. Violet and Mike are somewhat re-vamped, while Augustus and Veruca are basically identical, but the kids who play them are all very funny.
But when we finally get to the Chocolate Factory, things immediately go downhill. There are some amusing effects and cool set design, but the spirit of the original movie, and Dahl's original story, are absent. The movie just moves from one bigger, more elaborate version of the original set-pieces to the next, with no inspiration and no new spin.
Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka is mind-boggling. What is this character supposed to be? An adult child? A clueless shut-in? Or just a generic weirdo? Depp brings nothing to the character, he just talks like Mr. Rogers' psycho cousin and makes a lot of funny faces, somehow managing to come off as wooden. Gene Wilder played the character like a mysterious genius who knew more than he was telling his guests. Depp plays the character like a goofy buffoon who's simply a poor host.
The actor who plays all of the Oompa-Loompas is funny for about one minute, then that joke grows increasingly tiresome. By the time he's dressed up like a rock star doing pinwheels, it's just plain stupid.
The screenplay is very lazily written. Situations pop up in the story which then go nowhere, such as Violet and Veruca sharing a private glance at the mention of Ever-Lasting Gobstoppers, but then nothing coming of it. It's as though the writer decided to get rid of anything he felt was extraneous to the plot; in other words, he wanted to get to the next special effects sequence quickly, and keep that pesky plot as bare-to-the-bones as possible. It's obvious the filmmakers feel that their audience wants flashing lights and pretty colors, not an interesting story.
And that is the problem with CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. There's no shortage of things to look at, but once the novelty of that wears off, there's nothing more to it. Even a subplot involving Chirstopher Lee as Wonka's father is thrown in almost as an afterthought, then tossed aside as soon as it's served its purpose. Like so many Hollywood extravaganzas, there's a lot of CGI pizazz and mumbo-jumbo, but no soul.
The best I can say for CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is that it is better than Burton's PLANET OF THE APES. Then again, so was PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.