For the sake of being fair to this movie in this review, there’ll be no comparisons made between “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” or “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, because no one can play the role of Willy Wonka the way Gene Wilder did. With that said, Johnny Depp performed the role brilliantly, as he does pretty much every character.
Poor kid Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) finds the last of Willy Wonka’s (Johnny Depp) “Golden Tickets”. The tickets, of which there were five, allow for the five ticket founders and one guest, to follow Wonka around on a tour of his world famous chocolate factory, which no one had seen the inside of for many years.
Charlie joins the other kids; rich girl Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), the competitive girl Violet Biodegrade (AnnaSophia Robb), video game/television addict boy Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) and the fat boy Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) in the tour of the factory. One by one, the kids do stupid stuff that breaks Willy Wonka’s rules, and they suffer the consequences; whether it be being sucked up a pipe, turned into a blueberry, being attacked by squirrels and thrown down the garbage shoot, or the standard being transported into the television and made extra small. Charlie doesn’t break any rules, and thus wins the grand prize.
The Oompa Loompa’s, or I should say Oompa Loompa since they’re all the same guy (Roy Deep) are absolutely hysterical. The songs in this film are very well done, and are often pretty funny, though mainly because of the music video style that it’s shown in. The performances are well done, even by the kids, though Augustus looks terribly CGI at times.
Johnny Depp excelled as Willy Wonka, and everyone else filled their role quiet nicely. Tim Burton took a classic and made a great adaptation of it, one that is visually wonderful. A fun film that the whole family can enjoy.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory gets a three out of five: GOOD.
