Film review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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There's an eye-catching moment at the beginning of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that makes you wonder what if... When Willy Wonka first opens the factory doors to let in the famous five children who win a competition and their parents, they are greeted by a carousel of mechanical dolls singing a treacly ditty about Wonka. But the toys catch on fire with the effort and melt as the music winds down, eyes popping out in the heat. Wonka pops up next to the bewildered line waiting to go in and says “Neat, huh?”

If director Tim Burton could have maintained that slyly macabre tone throughout, what a darkly brilliant film we might have had. Instead we're left with, uh, a box of chocolates – pleasant tastes, some scowls and an over-full feeling. Translated, that means for an enjoyable but slightly ponderous and overlong remake that's done some things better and other things not half as well (shades of Planet of the Apes? At least there's no Mark Wahlberg).

CATCF is hindered somewhat by the simple fact that most of its story (by Roald Dahl) is known as well to every 10-year-old as their five times table, thanks to 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring a gleefully malicious Gene Wilder. (Humble boy wins ticket in international competition to enter Wonka's factory. The other four winners have a solid understanding of most of the Seven Deadly Sins, so boy wins ultimate prize – the keys to the factory.)

Burton has naturally distanced himself as much as practicable from the film's predecessor.

This revisit to the factory, whose exterior is a jumbled collection of Stalinist towers and crude concrete blocks and frosted panels of glass, finds Charlie (Freddie Highmore) rightly again the focus, hence the change in title to Dahl's original. Grandpa Joe used to work for Wonka, who fired the workers because industrial spies were stealing his magical recipes for non-stop chewing gum and ice cream that doesn't melt and installed Oompa Loompas to do the work. Charlie lives in a tumbledown house in the shadow of the factory with his destitute father and mother and four grandparents. The weather always seems grim. Wonka now has a movie-lengthening backstory involving disallowed lollies and a dentist father (the 83-year-old Christopher Lee, who will clearly outlive us all).

While Grandpa Joe (David Kelly, probably best known as the stand-in lottery winner in Waking Ned Devine) is a suitably impish sort, the other grandfather, George, has several drily delivered cracks thanks to octogenarian David Morris, who apparently only recently became an actor. Highmore is a scarily self-possessed 13-year-old, with his large ears and innocent but knowing eyes, and he easily conveys Charlie's unwavering moral sense and the rightness of his belief that no one deserves the prize more than him. This Charlie would never allow himself to pocket any sweets he wasn't allowed.

Johnny Depp didn't once remind me of Michael Jackson, which seems to be exciting some, though the white make-up, high-pitched voice and look (top hat, gloves, flamboyant full-length suit) could encourage that thought. His evil little giggle pulled me out of the idea that he was a more effeminate Edward Scissorhands. This Wonka is a connoisseur of schadenfreude. The other children seem to have been chosen on looks, Mike Teevee in particular looking very similar to his 1971 counterpart but having inevitably developed a fetish for violent computer games. But none seems able to break the mould Burton has cast for them. Edward Fox as Veruca Salt's long-suffering patrician father and Missi Pyle as Violet Beauregard's ambitious mother do best out of the parents.

CATCF is a great deal of fun, and contains some nice performances, but it drags in too many places. The Oompa Loompa musical numbers after each child is dispatched only add to its set-piece feel. Some moments are magic, such as the nut-cracking squirrels, and the odd left-field riffing, such as when Mike Teavee asks Wonka – after another sweet causes follicle profusion – who would want a beard.

“Well, beatniks for one, folk singers and motorbike riders. You know, all those hip, jazzy, super cool, neat, keen and groovy cats. It's in the fridge, daddy-o. Are you hip to the jive? Can you dig what I'm layin' down? I knew that you could. Slide me some skin, soul brother.”

It's hard to know, given the isolation of these gems, just who the audience is. It's too knowing to appeal to littlies beyond its lurid sets and hasn't enough of anything to please many adults. That said, it's a story kids love because it has good winners and bad losers. It's sufficiently different a reimagining of the tale that it is likely to appear on TV at holiday times long after the last copy of Gene Wilder has worn through.