Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Christopher Lee. Directed by Tim Burton. (1:5 cool PG: Quirky situations, mild language. At area theaters, and at IMAX at Loews Lincoln Square.
Candy can't buy happiness in Tim Burton's crazy, stylish "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a movie that will delight children, annoy fans of the 1971 version that starred a slyly subversive Gene Wilder and perplex everyone else.
Even though it's about the proverbial kid in a candy shop - more precisely, five kids in a candy shop - Burton has turned this into a live-action "The Nightmare Before Christmas," about an awkward loner who sees other people being happy and wonders what that's all about. The eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) can't feel pleasure, even though he's surrounded by it, so it's weirdly appropriate that the movie isn't "fun," even if it's amazing to look at (right down to candy-colored contact lenses).
Little ones will eat it up because it offers funny faces, gloppy textures, ridiculous parents, silly nonsense and more colors than in the biggest box of Crayolas.
Depp crafts another off-kilter character, this one a cross between a Howard Hughes germophobe - he recoils from children as if they are contagious - and a Disney animatronic on the fritz.
By the way, it's not a movie about Michael Jackson - although you can't blame audiences for making that leap as they watch an eccentric man-child in makeup and gloves who invites five lucky children for a romp in his carnival-like compound.
In Burton's version of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book, Depp's candyman feels no pleasure in his products. He's remote, creepy and unable to relate to people. He hates children, and he especially hates their parents (there's an explanatory back-story involving Christopher Lee as the young Willy's dentist dad). As in most of Burton's movies ("Batman," "Ed Wood," "Sleepy Hollow" wink , social alienation is the hallmark, and for all its psychedelic color and swirling rivers of chocolate, "Charlie" feels chilly, as if we're staring at it through a pane of glass.
Dahl's story is about Charlie Bucket, a penniless boy who lucks upon one of five Golden Tickets nestled inside Wonka chocolate bars. The tickets are for a personally guided tour of the chocolate factory (accompanied by an adult - in Charlie's case, David Kelly as his peppy grandfather), plus a lifetime supply of Wonka bars.
No one does whimsical ghoulishness like Burton. He sees Willy Wonka as a mad scientist (like the one who turned Depp into Edward Scissorhands?), a misunderstood genius who invents ice cream that doesn't melt and all-day suckers that last forever. He tinkers and tinkers, but can't find the formula for the happiness that comes so naturally to Charlie, who looks upon the factory's chocolate waterfall and cream puff delights with wide-eyed rapture.
In addition to Charlie (the delightfully unaffected Freddie Highmore), there's piggish Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), spoiled brat Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), gum-chewing overachiever Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) and video-game addict Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry).
Except for Charlie, the children are all icky, and ickier still are the parents who raised them that way. The Dahl story is merciless when it comes to bad parenting; the "bad nuts" get what's coming to them, done in by their appetites and bad manners. The best-staged revenge goes to the spoiled girl, who is attacked by a lab full of twitchy-nosed squirrels.
Between each comeuppance is a zany production number performed by the Oompa Loompas - all played by one actor, Deep Roy, and multiplied by computer graphics for numbers straight out of Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams. Composer Danny Elfman, using Dahl's actual lyrics, sings all the voices.
This version is more faithful to the Dahl book than "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," and improves upon that 1971 warhorse. But two hours stretches the story as thin as overpulled taffy, and the lavish, madcap set design and homages to famous movies can't mask all the empty calories.
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