Another one of Burton's campy and creepy train wrecks

Rating: 1/10 (10 May 2017)

This film was released in 2005, when I was in the 2nd grade, and my father took me to the army base theatre in my neighbourhood to watch it. It was targeted at children, but I just didn't get it and still don't get it even today. It was heavily predictable for one thing; Burton casts Depp in everything and as usual Depp comes off as a creepy freak who would be better as a pedophilic mime in a back-alley somewhere waiting to pop out from behind a dumpster, than a lovable and eccentric factory owner. He terrified the hell out of me as a child and still makes me cringe even today. The CGI is incredibly tacky. To be fair most of the child actors did a good job, but their scenes are always overshadowed by Depp's annoying and sometimes cruel behaviour towards the characters. He loves children a little too much at times, other times he seems repulsed by them. His mood swings implied a mental illness, not creativity or genius. And as usual, Burton never passes up a chance to slip his wife, Helena Carter, into a role, also very predictable and obvious. Many of Burton's actors are very typecast.
By far aside from Depp as Wonka, what irked me the most was the godawful musical numbers. Cross Lady Gaga with Michael Jackson, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, American Horror Story's "Freak Show" (Season 4), and Stephen King's It from the 1990's, and this film is about what you'd get. It was corny, bizarre, like the worst acid trip available. There's also a backstory thrown in for no apparent reason, maybe just as filler, which tries to give Wonka a tragic backstory of child abuse. This just comes off as incredibly silly. He acts like he has PTSD over something traumatic, but when it's revealed that his father loved him but was a dentist and simply didn't want Wonka to eat candy because he was wearing a retainer, it just makes Wonka's character seem even more spoiled and intolerable. I mean, he freakin' runs away from home over his father not letting him eat a Halloween chocolate ball? Somebody needs to grow the f*ck up in this film, and it's certainly not the kids or their parents. Actually despite the parents portrayed as meek enablers and bumbling bumpkins, they were all very likable for the most part. Their parenting skills may have been questionable but none of them seemed particularly bad, whereas Wonka sings and dances cheerfully as a little girl is shoved down a rubbish chute with a rotten fish skeleton? What the hell? Oh, and let's not forget the vulgar humour slipped into this film aimed at child viewers as well, with lines such as "don't touch those squirrel's nuts!" ...Ugh, that's just stupid.
All in all, I hated this film as a kid and I hate it even more today. I've found though that it does serve at least one purpose... ever play the Willy Wonka Drinking Game? You pop this film into your VHS or DVD player, you gather up a group of friends and some vodka and shot glasses, and throughout the film, each time a person says "what the f*ck?" while viewing, they have to drink a shot. Otherwise, this film, at least in my humble opinion, is good for nothing but landfill stuffer.