Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) - User Reviews

Its hard to review a film you can't find fault with.

Seeing as comparisons with the 70s cinematic adaptation of Roald Dahl's book are inevitable, we may as well start there: the major difference between the two films is the character of Willy Wonka - they are vastly different. Gene Wilder was witty and smart and mischievous, but lacked depth - not a criticism as it hurt the film not a bit.

Johnny Depp's Wonka is socially inept, distant and sometimes downright dangerous. He's also very vulnerable and has an interesting backstory concerning his childhood and his rise to confectionary fame that is in fact at the very core of this film. He's not too keen on children and can't stand the thought of parents at all. Since his self-induced period of isolation from the world at large, the only people he's truly comfortable around are the minuscule and seemingly mute Oompa-Loompas.

The Oompa-Loompas aren't entirely mute of course: they sing and dance in every style imaginable in what are now the only musical numbers in the film, and much better it is for it too. While there are hundreds and hundreds of them running the factory, they're all played by Deep Roy, who had the incredible task of acting every scene over and over again to be digitally placed (rather than digitally generated) multiple times in the same scene to allow hundreds of individual Oompa-Loompas to inhabit the screen at once, and in the end this is as much Deep Roy's film as it is Depp's - he brings a wonderfully understated humour to the film simply through his very restrained body language, made all the more funny for his near total absence of facial expression.

The children are much the same as they were previously, especially the bad ones, with only a few little tweaks here and there to bring them up to date. While the actor playing Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop are so scarily identical to their 70s counterparts to the point where it seems they must have been pickled in the interim, Mike TeeVea has become as addicted to violent videogames as television and Violet Beauregarde is an obsessive competitor, her mother feeding of the successes she can no longer achieve herself.

Charlie actually has less character than the 70s film as the focus is very much on Willy Wonka - Charlie has no character development because he's already the good little boy Willy Wonka is looking for from the offset. There's no crime in this as it's Wonka's film this time out and Charlie's scenes with his family are still amusing and touching and make for a very solid cornerstone to this film amid all the insanity of the chocolate factory.

Is it worth seeing if you're happy enough with the 70s version? Oh most definitely - there are some plot twists that will leave you stunned, and it has to be said the performances here come across a little less forced. Production values are much higher and it's visually splendid as you'd expect - not just because it has the cash and technology (which it certainly does - set design and special effects are both top-notch) but because the cinematography is absolutely first-class, Tim Burton has delivered the goods again and given us an incredible film.

More importantly this film has an excellent script that never ignores Roald Dahl's excellent book but only ever adds to it - and what it does add is perfectly in keeping with the tone of this wonderful story.

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