Enjoyable but will probably disappoint huge fans of the 1971 film

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2005)

Touted by many advocates as being closer to the original Roald Dahl book than the 1971 film, director Tim Burton's version both restores some elements of the book and adds just as many changes as the Mel Stuart-directed film. Even if authenticity to the source is of prime importance to you, this version is worth seeing, especially for fans of Burton and star Johnny Depp.
Burton sacrifices some of the mystery of the 1971 version in favor of trying to more "realistically" ground his odd characters, at least psychologically, as he often does--for example, in Batman (1989). Other characteristic Burton touches are present--grandiose yet lachrymose sets (an asset), regular references to other films (usually a detraction here), and the music of Danny Elfman (enjoyable, but the songs are not as sublime and memorable as Anthony Newley's 1971 music).
Burton and Depp wisely avoid paralleling Gene Wilder's most famous scenes as Willy Wonka, and Depp takes the character in a very different direction, though equally quirky (and different from the book). Here, Wonka seems to be a bit less god-like and a bit more in a psychological world of his own, but it works in its own way. Still, huge fans of the original film (and I'm one of them--it's easily in my top five of all time) might have difficulty not making comparisons, and Burton's version will suffer in their minds because of this.