Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Starring Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor and Christopher Lee

Written by John August, based on the Roald Dahl novel

Directed by Tim Burton

Absent, because Burton has always been curiously disdainful of storytelling. When he sticks close to the tales of misfits and freaks that are dear to his heart, he can stand with the giants— and he has two certified masterpieces, Ed Wood and The Nightmare Before Christmas (directed by Henry Sellick, but still a Burton creation all the way), under his belt to prove it. But he’s wasted way too much of his finite life span crapping out enormous bowl-circlers like Planet of the Apes and Mars Attacks. He has walked the line between genius and hack more precariously than any director since the glory days of Brian DePalma.

So where does Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fall in the genius-hack continuum? It certainly smells like a money grab. It’s yet another remake crying out for “that Tim Burton feeling”— take equal parts demented childlike glee, Goth sullenness and closet necrophilia; sprinkle in all the rococo curlicues, baroque gewgaws, twisted carnival colors and crazy oblique angles your production designers can whip up; add Johnny Depp and stir. Viola! A Tim Burton film. The moment Warner Brothers announced they were remaking the 1971 Mel Stuart/Gene Wilder classic, Burton must have known his phone was going to ring.

What Gen-Xer doesn’t already know the story backwards and forwards? There’s young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore), who lives in a one-room shack in London with his parents (Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor) and his two sets of grandparents, who all sleep in the same bed and apparently live in it too. The family is so poor that they subsist solely on cabbage soup. It’s a scene that would have given Charles Dickens the shakes.

And then there’s reclusive Howard Hughes-like candymaker Willie Wonka (Johnny Depp), who unshutters his long-shuttered factory to announce that five lucky children will win an ultra-exclusive tour of the Wonka operation, and that one of them will win an even bigger prize. All the children need is one of the five Golden Tickets hidden in one of five Wonka Bars distributed somewhere around the globe. Does poor but good-hearted Charlie find one of the tickets, walk up to the gates of the Wonka Factory with his Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) and prepare to meet the mysterious maker of the most amazingly magical and delicious candy in the world? Come on.

If you’re a devotee of the original and were worried that Burton would deviate from scripture, then rest easy. It’s all there. Gluttonous Augustus Gloop, avaricious Veruca Salt, prideful Violet Beauregarde and slothful Mike TeaVee— collectively representing five of the Seven Deadly sins— are present and accounted for, and they’ve changed little since 1971. The Mixing Room, the Chocolate River, the Everlasting Gobstoppers, the Three-Course Gum, the Sorting Room and the Great Glass Elevator: all survive intact. The Oompa Loompas return as the Greek chorus. The only thing missing is Slugworth, and you don’t really notice he’s gone.

What Burton and his pet screenwriter John August add to the mix is the official Wonka back-story, which is only slightly less odious than the back-story Ron Howard added to The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Why in the name of Robert McKee filmmakers think every character needs a ham-fisted back-story these days to explain his behavior is beyond me; Wonka’s not Charles Foster Kane, for cripe’s sake. I was prepared to hate this aspect of the film, but then Burton, the devious bastard, had to cast Christopher Lee as Wonka’s estranged father to win me over.

And then there are the Oompa Loompas. In a touch of true inspiration, Burton cast Indian actor Deep Roy as all of the Wonka slaves— er, employees— and then multiplied him thousandfold through delightful CGI fakery. The musical numbers, written by Danny Elfman and drawing from Bollywood, acid rock, Beatle and heavy metal influences, are so goddamned delightful that you’re peeved when they’re over.

But these successes aside, a lot of this picture looks phoned in. Burton had an obligation to his audience to elevate this material, and he half-asses most of it. The Mixing Room, our first real glimpse into the Wonka lair, is given a perfunctory treatment; it hasn’t been re-imagined, merely replicated, and Burton gives us no time to savor it. Indeed, aside from the Oompa Loompa bits, nearly all of the factory scenes are sadly forgettable. At several points, the actors literally stand around in front of the sets waiting to be told what to do.

There are, however, glimpses and tossed off bits— a snow-covered mountain of fudge as tall as Everest, wry homages to Kubrick’s 2001 and to Burton’s own Edward Scissorhands— that approach the sublime. The scenes that work best, oddly enough, are the ones we couldn’t wait to get through in the original: the setup with Charlie’s family in Chez Bucket. These scenes emit an organic glow and an emotional warmth that disappears the moment Charlie enters the factory. Once the doors open, the movie lurches in and out of autopilot.

And Johnny Depp? Well, he’s usually in a different movie than everyone else, isn’t he? Mostly, that’s a strength. But here, he’s the least essential element in the picture. The creepy Michael Jackson man-child influences are obvious, but Depp’s Wonka is a largely flaccid, vaguely cretinous creation. Wilder’s performance— a volatile mixture of Lord Byron, William Blake, Fred Astaire and P.T. Barnum— is so iconic that Depp couldn’t hope to touch it, so give him credit for going out on a limb. But this particular limb breaks.

In spite of these rather prodigious flaws, however, the film hangs together just well enough to work. Burton, August, Elfman and Depp make a formidable team, after all, and together they invest Charlie with just enough magic to secure its place alongside the original. And really, let’s not place the original on too high of a pedestal. Wilder’s Wonka will live forever, but a lot of that picture hasn’t aged well. You’re better off leaving it a precious childhood memory than actually watching it again.

So Charlie is more of a step sideways for Burton, rather than a step forward, but at least he hasn’t backslid. What I hoped Big Fish represented was his realization that story does matter. To watch great stories unfold is why we go to the movies in the first place; every film you’ve ever loved, you loved it because the story moved you. Fish demonstrated that Burton was learning the difference between banging around on a storytelling piano and giving us an actual tune. With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he’s shown us that he’s still trying to make real music.

July 19, 2005
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