Choccy Horror Show

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2005)

Well it's not really that bad, but it's difficult to think of a chocolate-related pun for a review that will hopefully convey a sentiment of adequacy and mild disappointment.
Hmm. Where to begin? I suppose the comparisons with the original 1971 Gene Wilder film are inevitable, so let's get them out of the way quickly: This is better. Marginally. My biggest beef with the original (aside from the rubbish spying sub-plot) was the kid they got to play Charlie  a bouffant-haired, no-mark sycophant, so ludicrously saccharine and brown-nosing, that I would have sooner sawn off my own arm than offer him a controlling stake in my chocolate empire.
No such problems here. Freddie Highmore is an astute piece of casting  he has the Dickensian urchin look down pat. Indeed, the whole Bucket family is steeped in a homely grime that is never quite managed in the more Americanised original.
I think the key to that is Tim Burton's decision to exploit the ambiguity over the setting of the action by making the Buckets English. I'm not sure there is anything in the book clarifying the location of the chocolate factory, or indeed the nationality of Charlie's family (there is talk of "dollars" in the film, but enough evidence to suggest an industrial town somewhere in the South of England. Slough maybe. Or maybe not.) It is an important judgement though because the British do poverty and old people so much better than the Americans who tend to be rather too chipper. Give me a bedful of ancient, dotty sitcom stalwarts and Helena Bonham Carter in a floury apron any day.
Whatever, after a promising beginning, the film descends rapidly towards the brown stuff (and I'm not talking about the contents of the chocolate river). The special effects are impressive and diverting, but one would expect nothing less in these days of bells and whistles. But the children are bland and don't lend anything new to the story other than to fuel the debate over the very purpose of remakes. One can only watch a fat kid getting sucked up a glass pipe so many times before ennui sets in.
Much of Burton's film is faithful to the book, but he can't resist an extra plot line reinforcing Dahl's fondness for generational conflict and his deep-seated mistrust of adults. Here, he seeks to explain Wonka's sociophobia by introducing a series of childhood flashbacks where a petrified Willy, his face encased in a fearsome metal contraption, is lectured on the importance of dental hygiene by none other than the Prince of Darkness himself, Christopher Lee, and if that's not enough to send a small child spiralling into a dark world of isolation and illicit confectionery, then I don't know what is.
I guess the key to the whole project was always going to be Johnny Depp, and I'm afraid to say he didn't really do it for me. I can kind of see what he was going for. He's obviously studied the raw material carefully and put his own unique spin on Wonka and, while his performance is undoubtedly a triumph of make-up and gauche comic timing, I was left slightly deflated and not a little alarmed by his striking resemblance to Dave Hill out of Slade.
I'm not suggesting there is an easy way to portray Wonka, but Wilder played him far too knowing and disingenuous, while Depp strives too hard to be the antithesis of adulthood, which, in this climate, and with a forty-year-old actor in the role, is difficult to achieve without drawing uneasy comparisons to Michael Jackson.
I always remembered the actual character to sit neatly between the two  crotchety and misanthropic, but with a childish playfulness that neither screen incarnation truly manages to capture. Also, as I recall, in Quentin Blake's original artwork for the books, Wonka is shown to have a rather rakish goatee beard  a detail studiously ignored by both sets of filmmakers - and I cannot help but conclude that this chin-nudity goes a long way towards explaining the flaws in characterisation.
As for the Oompa Loompas (in this case all played by the amusingly named Deep Roy and electronically duplicated) I will reserve judgement save for saying that both films neatly side-step any awkward racist questions by making them bright orange so that any moral outrage will be confined to Dale Winton and Kat Slater out of Eastenders.
6/10