Not as bad as I feared, but could have been better.

Rating: 6/10 (16 July 2005)

While I will admit that I've always loved the 1971 version, I was excited to hear that there would be a new one with Johnny Depp. Upon seeing the previews, I was ready for a big disappointment; luckily, it wasn't as bad as I had feared. But the main problems with it are big ones: the story and the direction.
The biggest difference between the two movies is subtlety. The Gene Wilder version is played on a much lower level; the jokes are under the surface, and the aspect of Willy Wonka as a person are visible if you look beneath his veneer of a weirdo. Tim Burton, playing true to form, decided to make Willy entirely into a weirdo, and removed any vestiges of a real person that existed; he also changed the style of humor into slapstick. So, in the previous movie, Gene Wilder's Willy seems to be having a private laugh at everyone else's expense; Johnny Depp's Willy doesn't care or understand what is going on, and everything about his life and the excursion with the children is completely arbitrary. Because it is so arbitrary, it means nothing and the audience has no reason to care about it.
The addition of Willy's relationship (or lack of one) with his father was an attempt by the writer and director to deepen Willy's character and turn him into a human being; it failed. What also failed was any attempt at chemistry between the parents and their children. None of them seemed in the least concerned for their children's' predicaments (with perhaps the exception of Mike Teavee's father, who seemed like a real parent who has trouble understanding his violent child); they were all like distant aunts and uncles who see their relations once a year.
With all that being said, the savior of this movie was Freddie Highmore, who took such a delight in the story that he brightened the screen whenever he was on it. He continues to give astonishing performances, and I feel that if the 1971 version had used an actor of his caliber it would have been even better.