Am I the only person who knows what Willie Wonka is supposed to be like?

Rating: 7/10 (4 September 2006)

This version of Roald Dahl's brilliant book begins beautifully. It does a wonderful job of creating a sense of wonder and excitement about the chocolate factory and Charlie and his family are quite appealing. And like all Tim Burton films, there is a great visual sensibility.
Then Willy Wonka shows up.
There have been two film adaptations of the book, and both have radically altered the character of Willy Wonka, who in the books is an affable elderly man. In the first movie, Gene Wilder played Wonka as sinister and hostile, while Johnny Depp plays him like a children's show host who has lost his mind (or, as many people have pointed out, as Michael Jackson).
Both of these portrayals were completely off the mark. Dahl underplays Wonka, and that makes him very funny. He simply acts like nothing particularly odd is happening and genially goes on with things as a series of disasters strike. But for some reasons, film makers want a more malevolent take on the guy.
Burton compounds this by making the movie more about Wonka than about Charlie. He gives Wonka a tortured past and drags out the story's ending, giving it a fairly absurd last minute and also making Charlie the only character who is not tempted by anything during this tour, which I'm sure Dahl would have considered an unacceptable change.
Still, the movie is really good looking, the acting is generally good (even Depp, I suspect, if you aren't familiar with the book), there's a lot of clever stuff in there and the original Oompa Loompa lyrics are used, and are musically quite good. The movie moves fast and it's generally entertaining. It just happens to be a movie made by someone who has decided to replace Dahl's sensibility with his own, and while Burton has made a few great movies among a bunch of overrated ones, he is not in the same class as Dahl.
Dahl's book is so descriptive and straightforward that really, all a director needs to do is take what's there and make that movie. I hope someday someone who really understands the source material takes a shot at this.