Sadly, a disappointment

Rating: 7/10 (25 September 2005)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a perfect example, for me at least, of a film that is, dare I use the word, 'overhyped'. And for once I'm not going to blame tinsel town and the media for doing this, but rather myself. I let myself look forward to this film so much; the book is one of my all-time favourites from childhood, the first film is also one of my favourite films of all time, and well, I couldn't imagine a better choice of person to direct a remake than Tim Burton.
And as so tragically often happens when you have expectations like this, they just weren't met. Admittedly I wasn't in a great mood going into the film since the morons at the box office neglected to tell me I'd be forced to sit down the front of the cinema due to a function involving a bunch of the rudest and worst-behaved kids (who incidentally can't have been much younger than me) taking up 80% of the seats and jabbering very loudly all the way through the film. But I digress, just needed to vent my spleen briefly.
Burton's take on the film is largely more faithful to the original text than Mel Stuart's film; there is no 'Slugworth' trying to steal everlasting gobstoppers, there IS a Mr. Bucket who screws caps onto toothpaste bottles for a living, and the Oompa-Loompa songs use Roald Dahl's original lyrics. However, the major focus for him is on the character of Willy Wonka, who is played with great gusto by Johnny Depp.
This focus is where Burton loses points for me. His intention seems to be to bring this eccentric genius out of enigma and give him a past; a life. And to do this he introduces a new character in Wonka's father, a strict, obsessively anal dentist who won't let the young Willy enjoy candy of any kind. What this is supposed to do is to explain the motivation behind Wonka's genius, his obsession with candy and, of course, his extremely bizarre behaviour.
In other words, the attempt is to make him less of a cardboard cutout. But while Burton does achieve this, it basically comes at the expense of practically every other character in the film. Part of the joy of the original book is that all the people in it are such delightfully over-the-top caricatures, Wonka included. And so by focussing such a large proportion of the film on only one of these caricatures, the other stereotypes - Gloop, Salt, Beauregard and Teevee - remain just that: stereotypes. Not only this but a substantial part of the story, where all these characters, is cut short to make room for all this extra plot line about Wonka's father, and frankly, the first half an hour feels extremely rushed. It's almost as though Tim Burton (or at least let's not leave out screenwriter John August) is saying to us "Yes yes yes, we all know what happens with the golden tickets, now let's hurry up and get to my stroke of genius about Wilbur Wonka the dentist". Grandpa Joe is also one of the characters who suffers for this, I feel. He doesn't come across quite as charmingly enthusiastic as I expected, largely because he doesn't have the screen time to do so.
Another criticism I had, and I daresay I may be regarded as a little unfair when I say this, but I really, REALLY don't care for Freddie Highmore's acting. He seems to have two modalities in which he can play - smiling cutely, or regurgitating lines as though he's reading them straight from the script. I found this with Finding Neverland and it's reinforced by him here. I mean, kudos to him and everything, he's only 13, but Charlie's presence was one element of the film I didn't mind being minimalised.
Having said these couple of criticisms, there is plenty to enjoy here of course. That was inevitable. Burton's visual flair is used to its maximum potential and you can tell that everybody involved would have had so much fun making this. It's also a good example of a remake simply because technologically it can go places the 1971 film wouldn't have dreamed of. Also, as I said, it does remain more faithful to the book and there are no teeth-gnashingly terrible "Poor Charlie" songs.
But of course the major winner here is Depp. As much as I would have liked more on the other characters, Wonka's character is just beautiful. He's basically just a camped-up weirdo but it's so much fun to watch. The grand opening of the factory doors was hilarious and was one of the highlights of an otherwise pretty ordinary year in cinema so far.
The most ironic thing is that when I first heard that Tim Burton was making a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I loved absolutely everything about the idea, except for the fact that Depp was attached to play Wonka and I wasn't sure he could pull it off. But as it turned out, Depp's performance carries what could otherwise be pretty standard material.
In a nutshell, then? Disappointing, but certainly not bad. 7 out of 10.