As Good As I Hoped It Would Be

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2006)

I was pleased to have this "Willy Wonka" re-make meet my expectations. Those expectations were high, at least in the visuals department. I expected a wild, colorful ride with brilliant hues and good special effects...and I was not disappointed.
It was inventively fun with those great visuals and another wonderful kid playing "Charlie." I doubted they could ever come up with another child as appealing and nice/wholesome as one in "Willy Wonka" but they found one in Freddie Highmore. He filled the bill magnificently, as did the "brat" kids.
A different feature of this version, as opposed to the 1970 original, was that here the Oompa-Loompas were all played by just one person, a very small Indian man named Deep Roy. One of the interesting "features" on the DVD details how difficult that was to do and how much time Roy had to put in to do all the things he did.
Johnny Depp, meanwhile, "did" what he always does - do a good job of playing a weird person. I get the feeling he relates easily to strange characters. He seems to play enough of them. This was the only part of the movie, frankly, where I preferred the 1970 version: the role of Willy Wonka. Yes, Depp was interesting as always but a little too weird, too Michael Jackson-like, for my tastes. I'll take Gene Wilder's take on the character.
Otherwise, this re-make has it all over the original, simply because it has 35 years of technology and computer work that the original wasn't able to have. It made this re-make a real "hoot" to watch. Since entertainment is what the business is called, and this movie is extremely entertaining, then I have no complaints. A fun two hours!