What A Waste of Time

Rating: 1/10 (5 December 2005)

I think this is one of those movies where you are either going to love it or hate it. I fall into the second category. I loved the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka as a kid (my two kids love it as well). I knew going into this that it was supposed to be different and more true to the book. I have never read the book so I can't comment on that but I found the basic story very similar. Anyway, I just didn't like this movie. You can tell right up front that it's a classic Tim Burton movie. Everything is very surreal looking. But I was just bored. I thought once they got to the chocolate factory that things would pick up but no such luck. While I generally like Johhny Depp, I didn't like his portrayal in this movie. I didn't like the way he looked or sounded. And I can definitely see the Michael Jackson comparison (although Depp has said this was not intentional). That just creeped me out even more. There were a couple of good one-liners but that was all I found redeeming about it. My mom put it on for my kids and after a few minutes they asked her if they could watch something else.