dull, clumsy remake

Rating: 4/10 (2 May 2006)

Tim Burton, normally one of the most innovative and inspired of modern American filmmakers, comes a cropper with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a cold and crass adaptation of the beloved children's story by Roald Dahl. This is actually the second filming of the work, the first being the charming and delightful 1971 film renamed "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" to give Gene Wilder the title role.
In this remake, Johnny Depp takes on the part of the famed chocolate manufacturer who decides to open up his factory to the first five children who find a gold ticket in one of his bars. Charlie is the sweet-tempered young boy who is the fifth to do so, and, thus, gets to take the tour along with four other obnoxious brats who have none of the purity of spirit he does.
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" fails to make us care about either the situation or the characters. Depp plays Wonka like a bizarre cross between Michael Jackson and Carol Burnett, and Burton, even with all his attention to detail in the sets and special effects, is unable to distract is from the fact that not a whole lot is really going on in the film. The early scenes, involving Charlie's eccentric relatives and their attempts to secure the ticket for him, have a warm, familial feel to them, but once the tour itself begins, we become as imprisoned in the claustrophobic setting as the characters themselves.
Locked in a tedious monotony, the plot essentially consists of Wonka, the children, and their respective parents moving from room to room where each of the four brats meets up with his or her well-deserved comeuppance in the form of a bizarre factory accident, until only sweet little Charlie is left. Interspersed throughout are a series of inane song-and-dance sequences a la Busby Berkeley and uninteresting and undramatic flashbacks to Wonka's deprived and unhappy childhood that are somehow supposed to explain why he has become the creepy character we find at the center of the story.
The art direction and set decoration are fine but not impressive enough to make us overlook the dullness and unpleasantness of so much of the film. Mr. Burton may need to go back to making the kind of small, quirky films that he cut his directorial teeth on and leave these empty, bloated big screen extravaganzas to others.