Begins wonderfully...but the fun dissipates inside the factory, and Depp is a disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (5 January 2009)

Tim Burton's version of Roald Dahl's classic children's book, previously filmed with music in 1971 as "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", opens with great promise, featuring incredible art direction that mixes German Expressionism with Grimm-like fantasy (aided by Danny Elfman's atmospheric, if familiar, score). Charlie Bucket, a child of little privilege who lives with his family in a lopsided house, longs to be one of five lucky worldwide recipients of a prized Golden Ticket, an invitation to tour the candy factory of reclusive genius Willy Wonka. Burton mounts the excitement of the treasure hunt, with the tickets hidden in Wonka candy bars, with gleeful aplomb, and the satire--though a bit heavy-handed--is both trendy and amusing. Once the action moves to Wonka's foreboding factory however, and Johnny Depp takes center stage as Wonka (a would-be misplaced child of the sixties), interest wanes. All the kids and parents are well-cast, particularly Freddie Highmore as Charlie and David Kelly as his Grandpa Joe, but the computer-generated effects turn Wonka's landscape into an impenetrable den of ugly colors and outsized objects (like moving wallpaper). Burton, who expressed nothing but contempt for the previous version, does borrow pieces from that film, improving upon some areas (such as Veruca Salt's exit, with squirrels instead of geese) but falling far short on others (when Grandpa Joe and Charlie secretly unwrap a Wonka bar at night and come up empty, there's no camaraderie between the two, and no embracing of the familial theme). The musical Oompa-Loompas are a dreadful come-down from the predecessor, with songs sung in different musical styles and Burton staging each like a music video (these sequences, too, steal from the first film, yet the Oompa's message ultimately gets lost in the silliness). Depp performs with too much grotesque caricature; sure, his Wonka is out of step with the world, but his sarcasm is too modern, and is geared to get easy laughs from the audience. Screenwriter John August is more out of touch than Wonka; using nasty put-downs to separate Charlie from the other kids is a facile and lazy way of telegraphing us that these children are bad examples, and the flashbacks to Wonka's childhood (as well as a visual history of the Oompa-Loompas) does absolutely nothing but chew up time on the clock. We first see Wonka himself in a flashback based on a story from Grandpa Joe (didn't Charlie know that his grandfather once worked for Willy Wonka?), making Wonka's official entrance several minutes later a non-event. This story is difficult to film without getting gummy or preachy, but Burton was on the right track with his opening sequences. Too bad the second-half is so misbegotten (and not even ambitious, really) that all the mystery drains away like melted chocolate. *1/2 from ****