Do yourself a favour and go rent the original.

Rating: 1/10 (16 July 2005)

Absolutely awful. Sorry, it's the truth.
I wanted it to be good too. The original is brilliant, a timeless piece of pop culture. But what Tim Burton did to this film... OK, picture Fred Durst, Avril Lavigne, the Spice Girls, and the New Kids on the Block covering "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Drunk. That is really how bad this film is.
My biggest problem with the film is that they left out Charlie's sin. I mean, no fizzy lifting drinks? C'mon!! One of the things that humanized the original Charlie, the polite and thoughtful one amongst a pastiche of brats, is that Charlie too broke the rules, and reasonably invoked Wonka's wrath. Charlie's innate good nature eventually redeems him, Also, for Darwin's sake, cut out the music. "PAINFUL" is the only word I can conjure to describe it.
I will admit that I have not read the Dahl novel, so I do not know if the original included all the drudgerous background on Wonka. However, the constant flow-killing flashbacks slows the pace of the movie to a crawl, and normally Depp's acting can carry any role, but this script and character rendering were just terrible. Perhaps the background information on Wonka should have been one big chunk in the beginning of the movie, because spacing it out has no build-up value at all.
Also, worst voice on a Depp character, well, ever.
There really was nothing to redeem this piece-of-crap moneysucker. I can't believe I actually wasted $12 to see it. Between this, "The Stepford Wives," and "Godzilla," I have lost all faith in the movie industry.