Another magical Tim Burton trip!

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 2005)

Roald Dahl's exhilarating children's novella is brought back to life by the best possible team imaginable! If there's anyone out there in cinema land capable of re-telling Dahl's colorful  yet macabre  story, it has got to be director Tim Burton (with his unique ability to create dark, fairy-tale like atmospheres), class actor Johnny Depp (not one character is too eccentric for himnot even Willy Wonka) and music-maestro Danny Elfman (whose typical style gives an extra magical touch to every film). With these three icons of nowadays cinema involved, the new adaptation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was bound to be an enormous success and definitely one of the greatest movies of the year 2005. Well, the movie didn't turn out as amazing as I hoped, but still it's a very beautiful and occasionally heart-warming experience with excellent set pieces and another highly memorable role for Depp. It's very likely that you've read the best-selling book or saw the earlier film version (starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka) but in case you're from another planet: Charlie Bucket, the titular character, is one of five lucky children who wins a grand tour in Willy Wonka's world famous chocolate factory. Wonka is a bit of a loner who normally never grants anyone access to his factory because there were too many competitors in the past who were out to steal his recipes. Charlie and the others enter a magical world where chocolate and other types of candy are made in the most bizarre waysand by the most bizarre kind of factory workers. The always-amazing Johnny Depp is very aware of the fact he's the star and tout of this production and he clearly is in a great shape again. His performance of Willy Wonka is very cheerful and, just as it was the case in Pirates of the Caribbean, you gladly allow him to go over the top. The young Freddie Highmore is really good as well in portraying Charlie, a boy with a limited imagination but a heart of pure gold. The screenplay contains some terrific dialogues and the (blackly tinted) humor is well spread over the whole film.
And yetTim Burton and C° slightly disappointed me during some moments in the film. The many flashback (for example revolving on Wonka's supposedly traumatizing childhood) are too extended and actually quite redundant. Also, some of the character drawings are definitely underdeveloped, like Grandpa Joe for example, whom we only get to know superficially. Biggest letdown of all was the "Oompa Loompas"-tribe. These little people fail to convince and especially their morality-songs are overlong and pointless. Compared to the first cinematic version of the book, released in 1971, I personally find Burton's film slightly weaker. Sure the older film had those very annoying songs and Johnny Depp simply crushes the memory of Gene Wilder but yet the wholesome was more captivating and the pivot sequences in the 1971 version (like the boat-ride and Oompa-Loompa life-lessons) were a lot more sinister. And if there's one term that fully describes Roald Dahl's oeuvre, it is "sinister".