Too dark to watch

Rating: 1/10 (6 October 2012)

If you love kids, don't let them watch this darkness but warn them against its cruelty; have them see the 1971 Wilder version instead: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/ though even it is regrettably dark, parental discretion & warning strongly advised. I have no desire to be negative about Johnny Depp's considerable gifts; it's rather the film's monstrous concept that's the problem, though I've no idea whether this or the 1971 Wilder version is closer to the book original. While Gene Wilder's 1971 version is a not-quite-so-dark delight, this darker version is needlessly and gratuitously cruel (not knowing which version is truer to the book original), kind of like the current vile, sadistic "angry birds" phenomenon that kids also don't need, as harshly as the cold, selfish, senseless world in which they're made to suffer already seeks their destruction. So much for the high price of post-Christian anti-God "freedom" (e.g. the hypocritical Star Trek delusions of godhood) where the imagined "cure" is vastly worse than the disease so grossly ignorantly and hypocritically condemned by lawless fascists, as the once great and literate civilization sinks ever lower into gross illiterate barbarism, as seen in this film, significantly surpassed by the 1971 rendition & its wonderful musical nature, seen at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/