Pointless. Utterly, Painfully Pointless.

Rating: 4/10 (20 July 2005)

As a kid, I worshiped the '71 version of WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. I read Dahl's book CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY in one sitting as a pre-teen and shrugged, "Eh, the movie's better." When I heard Tim Burton was planning to make a "more faithful" version of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, I vacillated between "hey, this could be great" and "oh, man, is this going to blow chunks", with each tantalizing picture and story from the set tipping me one way or the other with distressing regularity. So, on the opening Saturday, I bundled the family up and headed out to the theatres to see which diametrically opposed opinion would win out in my head.
I'm sorry to say, the "blow chunks" side won by a mile.
The first 40-or-so minutes of this movie is really amazing, with some of Tim Burton's best "real world" visuals ever. It captures quite well the heartbreaking, soul-sucking poverty of Charlie Bucket and his barely-functional family, far better than the '71 movie version does. Grandpa Joe is given a decent backstory (he used to work for Wonka when Wonka had human employees), Charlie has a father in this version who loses his job capping toothpaste tubes (Wonka's contest has created such a demand for candy that the demand for toothpaste rises faster than humans can produce), and they all (Mom, Dad, Charlie, and four bedridden grandparents who share the same bed) live in a ramshackle house that looks as if it would fall over with one really strong breeze. The highlight of this part of the movie is Freddie Highmore as Charlie, whose big eyes and beaming smile conveys Charlie's innate inner goodness to near perfection, and when he is heartbroken over losing his chance to get a golden ticket, you feel your own heart ache...and then you cheer when he finally DOES get one of his own. This young actor's got quite a future ahead of him.
And then, it's time for our five lucky winners to enter the factory. And that's when the film goes to Hades in a handbasket and never recovers.
The blame for this goes around more or less equally between Burton, Elfman (whose score, with the exception of the great "Willy Wonka The Amazing Chocolatier" song, is the worst he's ever done), and the writers...but at least some of the blame has to rest on Johnny Depp's hideous portrayal of Wonka, which completely overwhelms the rest of the movie. Garish costumes, bad hair, freaky makeup, strange voice, and weird mannerisms do not a great performance make, and one can't help but compare Depp's version of the character with Gene Wilder's sly, silky, menacing-yet-hilarious portrayal 24 years earlier. Wilder comes out on the winning end of that race by more lengths than Funny Cide at the Preakness a couple of years ago. Wilder's Wonka is a mysterious sort, offering tantalizing glimpses of what's under the surface, a worldly and wise man who has a child's sense of wonder and fun mixed with an extremely liberal dose of adult cynicism. Depp's Wonka is insane, maladjusted, and just plain weird, and the result is off-putting to say the least.
The writing from the chocolate factory onward is HORRIBLE. It's as if the writers abandoned all pretense of their promised "faithful" adaptation and instead just threw a bunch of scenes from the '71 version, pages from the book, and bad plots from a random story generator together in a hat and compiled whatever came out the other end. Want a sample of the bad plotting these monkeys with word processors came up with? Wonka's love of candy comes from...get ready...childhood trauma and daddy issues. Really. I'm not kidding. I'll wait while you grab your barf bags before going on.
Elfman's terrible music...well, the less said, the better. I don't care if his lyrics come straight out of the book, that doesn't make them GOOD. What happened to the supercomposer whose grandiose superhero themes made him THE go-to guy for summer blockbusters? Yuck.
But the worst blame has to go to Tim Burton. Once the movie hits the chocolate factory, Charlie--you remember him, the kid whose name is in the title?--completely disappears. It's as if he's just there to fill a frame. If he has a dozen lines inside the factory, I'll be shocked. The rest of the kids are no better (except for Mike Teavee, who is very well played here). Several visuals are stolen color-for-color and prop-for-prop from the '71 movie, except they're not done as well. The ability to use CGI to render things in the factory (165 Oompa Loompas, all played by Deep Roy; blueberry Violet; the candy boat ride) does NOT improve on the '71 version at all. And what a waste of Christopher Lee as Dr. Wonka (Wonka's dentist father, who forbade his son candy because he proclaimed it would rot his son's braces-encased teeth). Like the writers, Burton completely abandons his "faithful" adaptation in favor of a "re-imagining" ala his dreadful PLANET OF THE APES. The film meanders another 20 minutes beyond its logical ending just so Burton can work some more on his father issues ala the plot of BIG FISH.
By the time the movie does end (it's a REALLY long-feeling 2:20), all I could think of was running home and putting in my DVD of the '71 version to cleanse my brain's pallet. Don't be surprised if you're tempted to do the same. Better yet, save yourself the $10 and rent the '71 version instead. It may be sticky sweet, but it's far better than the nasty, bitter pill that's in theatres now.