Dark Chocolate

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2008)

As per usual the team of Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton can always be counted on to deliver from the dark-side. Thus it is with this remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory though this was actually done under its original title.
Depp expands his list of quirky characters and expands his range which I think is bigger than any other player around today. His chocolate magnate Willy Wonka is a dark character, so different than Gene Wilder back in the day. His character is great, but it might have frightened a few little tykes going to a family film.
The story is basically the same, young Charlie Buckets a kid from a poor and extended family where both sets of grandparents are all under one roof. He lives in a town where years ago all the human workers were given the sack from the Wonka Chocolate Factory and it became fully automated. What grief he must have gotten from organized labor can only be imagined.
Anyway Wonka who's become so obsessed with being the Chocolate King he's got no family and no heirs. We're not even sure, but that he might be celibate. He's put five gold tickets in one of his millions of Wonka Bars and the lucky five kids who get them win a trip inside his factory where no one has been.
Charlie turns out to be one of the five and accompanied by his grandfather and the other kids and their guardians he takes a magical tour of the place. They meet the little tribe of Oompa-Loompas who live and work in the factory.
Freddie Highmore is an earnest young Charlie. I do miss Jack Albertson as the grandfather from the first film. He registers far better than David Kelly in this one.
The film really is a star vehicle for Johnny Depp, more so than the first film was for Gene Wilder. You'll like it, it's like biting into that first Wonka Bar.