Missing a sense of place and time and focus

Rating: 5/10 (6 September 2016)

It was hard to figure out what place in time the movie was occurring. A family of four grand parents, two parents and Charlie living in one dilapidated hovel in the middle of 21st century England? And they are white English living in terrible hardship? At the same time, modern video games exist, and a post industrial Japan also exists. What an odd mish mash that made the movie completely awkward from the get go. I could believe it if it was pre-war, war time, or post war England, but not the 21st century. The character of Willy Wonka played by Johnny Depp was another major problem. He was played (and also written) as a sociopath child - man. A kind of Peter Pan meets Michael Jackson meets eccentric foppish dandy. While this would be okay if he was a boy lost in a man's world, he is not in a man's world. He's leading a group of (mostly) wayward unruly children. It's like the blind, leading the blind. Johnny Depp's character provides no judgment or focus that the group on this adventure badly needs. Also, as everyone says, the Ooompah Loompahs are terrible. I enjoyed some of the visual production design elements. Those were fun to watch.