More for adults than kids

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2010)

Having read the Roald Dahl book with my kids, I was looking forward to seeing this film.
The movie has a lot of good points: the animation and creative details in the sets are fantastic. Clooney and Murray are both very funny - I thought Meryl Streep was pretty flat. A lot of the visual gags and the witty, modern script is funny for adult viewers.
I have 2 beefs with this movie: 1) It strays very far from the tone and conception of the book. Probably any attempt to turn a short children's book into 90 minutes of screen time requires lots of padding, extra characters, story, and scenes. The characters are all turned into hip modern (sub)urbanites. If you haven't read the book, this won't bother you.
2) This film is marketed as a kids movie, or at least "family-friendly". Unless you're comfortable with a lot of transparently-veiled swearing, you may conclude (as I have) that this movie is not for family viewing. As stated in the parent's guide, "Instead of using profanity, characters say sentences that would contain a swear word, but the word is replaced by the word "cuss". What is not stated is that not 5 minutes goes by in this movie without a swear replacing "cuss" for f*** (apparently Anderson has an infatuation for the f-word). Also, the characters use the same tone and inflection as if they were really swearing - "What the cuss!?" "cluster-cuss", etc. The ratings board was really asleep at the wheel giving this film a PG rating with all the transparent swearing going on. Ruined an otherwise good movie for me.