Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Tricky, this one. Very tricksy. My best advice to anyone going to see this movie is not to compare it to the original.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is very much a Tim Burton film. The sets and visual appeal of the movie are very typical for his style (as to be expected), and the characters behave in that strange and sometimes dark manner that defines most of Burton’s work. I’m a big fan of most Tim Burton movies, but I had a little trouble with this one—shockingly, I had trouble with Johnny Depp.

The plot is virtually identical to the original movie (and book for that matter), with just one notable twist concerning Willy Wonka’s background. Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) lives with his poor family in an extremely run-down house, which is slanted and convoluted in that very typical “poor people live here” Burton fashion. One day the mysterious candy-maker Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) announces that he will open his factory to five children who have the fortune (as in either luck or wealth) to find a golden ticket in one of his candy bars. The alarmingly rotund Augustus Gloop, snotty rich girl Veruca Salt, gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde, and obnoxious television and video game addict Mike Teavee all win the first four tickets, leaving that final golden prize for Charlie to find. Which of course he does.

Charlie and his Grandpa Joe join the other children at the factory, and it is at this point that we are introduced to the elusive and mysterious Willy Wonka. I was most anxious to get to this point in the movie, as I was curious to see how Johnny Depp would portray this famous character. Unfortunately, I was slightly disappointed. I know I shouldn’t compare him to Gene Wilder in the original movie, but I could not help but think that I preferred the old Wonka to this odd new one. Depp consistently creeped me out, and I found him to be too silly and awkward, mostly in the way that he spoke in a disturbing high-pitched voice. Freddie Highmore’s Charlie Bucket is definitely more likable than the original one, and he was, if possible, even more good-hearted. He doesn’t make any mistakes, is generous to a fault, and is steadfastly loyal to his family. The other children and their equally despicable parents were played well, and the singing Oompa Loompas apparently decided against the psychedelic dancing this time around. I felt that the lessons we were supposed to learn from watching the rotten children get their comeuppance was downplayed a little more this time, although the film still retained that particular dark element of punishment. It is always somewhat disturbing to watch someone get sucked up a tube or blown up into a blueberry about to pop, especially when Wonka had no clear method for making things right again.

It would seem that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the perfect story for Tim Burton’s unique and always entertaining style, and it basically was just that; but, in the end I couldn’t get over Johnny Depp’s performance as Willy Wonka. The flashbacks to Wonka’s childhood were intriguing, but often came at the expense of making Willy Wonka appear even more disturbing as he mutters to himself while lost in a trance of childhood memories. I missed the gleam in Gene Wilder’s eye, as if to show that he was not insane and creepy so much as clever and magical.

Don’t get me wrong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was definitely good, but only if one doesn’t mind watching a Michael Jackson-esque weirdo escorting kids around Neverla—er, the chocolate factory.