Johnny Depp no Gene Wilder

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2005)

This movie was going along pretty well, until, that is, Johnny Depp enters the picture. I just don't know why Tim Burton allowed him to give this horrible performance. First of all, his perfectly white teeth: very creepy. They looked like dentures. Okay, I understand where the idea came from: his father was a dentist and he was forced to wear head gear during his childhood, which, looks more like a torture instrument, but okay, fine. But they were creepy, and not in a good way. Plus how did Wonka go from a fairly normal-seeming kid, albeit wearing giant headgear, to this bizarre, make-up wearing guy with a Lord Fauntleroy haircut and Michael Jackson-like lipstick? And did anyone else notice that he sounded just like Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie? Same inflection in his voice. I like the photography in the movie; I liked the fact that the movie explained Willy Wonka a bit more, and the flashbacks were well-done, but the other negatives were the fact that the gold ticket winners were exact replicas of the originals, so that there was nothing original there, and the Oompa Loompas, oh, no! Almost unwatchable. The same man multiplied appearing in leather or pleather outfits of various colors, singing practically unsustainable songs to explain the moral of whatever happens to each child. I think the movie had potential but it just veered off course horribly.