Wait for it to arrive on cable... at best

Rating: 2/10 (24 June 2006)

When I heard a remake was being done of this movie and that Depp was going to star in it I was optimistic. The book was good and the original movie was entertaining as a child, though incredibly dated visually. When I saw the first preview that optimism vanished and I was very disappointed by what I saw. That was reinforced by both the critics' reviews as well as the public reviews after the movie was released.
I opted to wait for it to arrive on DVD, and then only watched it when a friend loaned it to me, and I'm very happy that I didn't spend a penny on this. The movie was absolutely atrocious, and I can't for the life of me figure out how it has an average rating of 7.5 on IMDb. Every person I've ever talked to that has seen this movie did not like it. The movie is so bad that I really don't even know where to begin with a review! Suffice to say that I didn't even stick around to watch the ending, I called it quits about 3/4 of the way through the movie and I very rarely do that, especially if I'm watching a DVD.
The movie, at least what I saw of it, was pretty much word for word and scene for scene, identical to the original. The cast of characters was also the same. The Oompa Loompas looked to me to be digital copies of a single Oompa Loompa, but I'm not positive.
The biggest disappointment to me was Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka. I really like him as an actor, and there are few movies he's put out that I haven't enjoyed, but I couldn't stand him in this movie. This is unfortunate because Willy Wonka is an interesting character that has a lot of potential for a good actor. I don't know how the character was written but Depp played it very effeminately, which seemed to me to just be weird, and not in a good way.
I could go on and on about all the disappointments of this movie, but it really just seems like a waste of time. Whatever you do, no matter how much you liked the book, the original movie, or Jonny Depp, don't pay a cent to see this. If you must see it, wait until it comes out on cable or eventually network television.