So it's "Charlie" this time not "Willy Wonka"?.. WRONG !

Rating: 5/10 (10 August 2009)

I asked myself a lot why Tim Burton made this movie? Is he only making a living through movies? Not Burton that I know. Is he trying to remake a story with a precise different point of view? This is what I didn't find here at all! So is he making the studio what it wants, so the studio would give him later the chance to do what he wants? That's the closest I can get to a satisfying answer!
It's just another one from the mammoth mound of remakes that Hollywood, the bankrupt Hollywood lately, produces in the 2000s just to produce. And, unfortunately, it didn't even get the Burton stamp on it, being tasteless and unsurprising, with nothing that original as well. So you can say confidently that this is Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (2001): Part 2!
It was between so ordinary and provocative, and I think ordinary Burton's movie is provocative enough! For instance, about the provocation part, you'll find Johnny Depp performing badly in a rare time. Just think of it; Willy Wonka, as we knew by this very movie, was one self-made millionaire, who left his home while he was a kid, to end up building an empire of candy industry, however, Depp's performance showed Wonka as one sissy brat; who's close to Michael Jackson's image as an inordinate weirdo only!
The movie invests the CGI in the worst way ever. Making all the Oompa Loompa as one ugly and glum midget was a historical stroke of stupidity. Aside from his too silly emotionless face, that was so BORING. It was mere showing off. And it didn't serve the darkness of the story; it served my tedium out of it. Let alone that seeing Deep Roy parodying Ester Williams's big numbers was completely awful and sickening!
Overall, it misses imagination. I didn't find anything that new to savor. And it's quite a shame when that is said about a movie by the one who made once Beetle Juice, Edward Scissorhands, or Mars Attacks! I liked the ominous intro of the burning dolls, but the thing is there wasn't more.
Still the biggest irritation comes from the deception of making the movie this time about Charlie not Wonka. Whereas we've watched carefully Mr. Wonka's history so his gratuitously nauseating journeys, his psychological problems, even the way he gets saved at the end, while Charlie was more present in the old movie, with songs and memorable moments. It's more than obvious that this is a Johnny Depp movie from start to finish, and it wasn't interesting as its likes too.
Moreover: Danny Elfman's music lacked its own uniqueness. Surely this movie isn't appropriate for kids; enough to remember the pupils come out of the dolls' eyes while they're on fire! And Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins, Paul Newman were considered for the role of Grandpa Joe?? And in early 2003, Gregory Peck was offered the role!! How the movie makers got the guts to consider all of these icons, or even offer the role to a legend as big as Peck, while it's basically a trash of a role that got totally nothing to its actor??!!
Most of the songs were OK. And it was good to see the history of Wonka, criticizing the TV, or utilizing Wonka's elevator as a fancy transportation. It was even very good to cast Dracula himself, Christopher Lee, as his terrifying father. Yet all of that didn't give me the original movie that I wished for. It was only the "new" message of the family being more important than money that this movie succeeded at delivering, but without any comic moments or even enjoyably dark ones.
When you watch useless remakes everyday is something really woeful, but when it comes to one of the few REAL ORIGINAL movie makers too; so that deserves a stark WOE. It's not Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it's Tim Burton and the Remakes Factory, being the least amusing and the true melancholic in the bunch.