Could have been good but failed

Rating: 1/10 (13 December 2011)

When I was a kid, Roald Dahl was one of my heroes. His books really understand some of the ways kids think. They're downright nasty at times but they ring true to children and adults. So therefore, I would expect any movies based on his books to capture that essence and to look the way we imagined the story or to show a new way of imagining it that is just as good as our version.
In 1971, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a perfect movie version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It didn't follow the book all the time but it captured the heart of the story and, at times, told the story even better, especially in the character of Charlie. Other directors have made good films out of Dahl books as well, even when they deviated from the material. Since Burton wanted to make an adaptation that was closer to the book, I was excited to see what he came up with because it really is a good book.
Let me make something perfectly clear. This movie could have been fantastic under Burton's direction. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has some intense and almost disturbing ideas and had Burton intended to make this a horror film he would have succeeded with a lot of the elements in the movie staying the same. The soundtrack sounds like something in a horror film. Some of the scenes are scary enough that a bit of tweaking could make it fit the horror genre (especially the blueberry scene, little tip, that wasn't supposed to be scary, it was supposed to be WEIRD). And had they made this a horror film, tweaking Depp's performance would have worked to its advantage seeing as he's already creepy enough. Yes, this movie could have worked. But like with The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, they decided to take this dark and disturbing direction and market it to children and, even more insulting, Dahl fans.
Taking lines directly out of the book does not make this movie more faithful to the book. If that had been Burton's intention, he would have made the movie a little brighter and a lot more whimsical. Neither Depp nor Wilder really capture the Wonka from the book (who acts a bit like the 11th Doctor from Doctor Who, now I think of it) but deviation from the character isn't necessarily an issue. Wilder drew on the mad scientist elements from the book and made the role a real joy to watch. But Wonka from the book was odd, yes, but not awkward like Depp's portrayal. I don't know what drugs he was on but his performance was awful. Depp could have been a good Wonka and that makeup would have worked, again, had they wanted to turn this into a horror film. Coming back to the lines taken from the book, had Depp performed the character just like the one in the book, the lines would have worked. But they simply didn't work for his portrayal. Nothing worked at all.
One of the few things I thought the film did a little better was making the kids more bratty. They should have toned down Mike Teavee, however, who was annoying but not necessarily a complete jerk. Violet's upgrade worked well because it played on a stereotype we've all seen, the kid who has to win everything. If there's one error in Dahl's writing, it's that his earlier protagonist children didn't have much personality, an error he fixed with later books, and that's very obvious with Charlie but Charlie was a nice kid with the spark of imagination and he was a bit of an idealist. Peter Ostrum's portrayal took that and improved on it. Freddie Highmore, who is a fine actor but nonetheless was subject to the directing, took that character and did NOTHING with it. In fact, he gave the character even less personality. The exact same can be said for Veruca, who was a brat in the book, even more bratty in the original movie, and had no personality in this movie.
Long story short, this was very close to being a good film. The tone should have been shifted to horror and it would have worked on every level with a bit of fixing here and there. It was already dark and creepy and removing the stupid, horrible jokes would have made it a lot more scary and thus it would have been an interesting take on the book. As it stands, it simply does not work for anyone. It's too scary for children and too stupid for adults. Half the characters and cardboard cutouts or stereotypes and the other half are over-acted or over done and the one character that actually worked, Violet, still was bogged down by everything else that went wrong. Read the book, watch the 1971 film, but don't waste your time on this film. It's not worth it.