A lot of unused potential

Rating: 5/10 (25 October 2005)

Now I am a big Tim Burton fan, and quite fond of his favorite star, mr Depp, in pretty much all of his productions..
But perhaps that was just the problem; I had quite high expectations, and found myself rather disappointed in the end..
The movie is quite colorful and oddish, just the way I like it, but that's pretty much where the good stuff ends for me. Sure, there were some funny bits n pieces here and there, but in whole, the movie was rather boring.
The pace was quite predictable and tempered, clearly so kiddies won't lose track of what's going on; Johnny Depp, who is capable of performing quite amazing characters just didn't seem to really be in there.. as though he just grabbed together some elements of former roles - a bit of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas here, a bit of Finding Neverland there, with the typical 'what on earth are you babbling about?'-oddity that marks his style - and .. did his thing.
Actually, apart from the grandparents, I found all acting rather dull. The characters are put down very well, no doubt about that; very expressive in terms of their stereotypic roles.. but their responses to important (supposidly shocking) events lacked any of the animation you'd expect.. (perhaps because these events were to a large extend 3d-animations, giving the whole movie this blue-screen-movie feel)
They simply were not THERE. (For those of you who've seen 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow', and felt that the sense of presence by the actors was lacking know what I'm talking about..) Imagine a plane crashing into a school and the parents going like "oh my, thats not good, is it?" with only a mildly worried look upon their faces.. just no emotional congruence whatsoever..
Then the sound-track bored me, and the Oompa Loompa's just got on my nerves.
Basically, I felt there was a lot of unused potential in this movie, as though Tim Burton just wanted this thing finished asap, so he could tend to his other projects..