My Movie Review on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Greetings, my friends.

This is your jolly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.

Today, following my analysis on "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", I'm gonna give you guys my take of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".

Considering that the premise is pretty much the same as the last movie, I hardly think giving a rundown of it is necessary.

I’d like to be honest, I had never seen this film until just this morning after renting it on iTunes 20 days ago. Although, I read many interesting things about the movie, such as how enthusiastic the family of Roald Dahl were to have Tim Burton onboard as director in contrast to others that were previously courted for the position, such as Rob Minkoff. The prime reasons I wanted to see this movie were because of Johnny Depp, as he is and always will be one of my favorite actors, and because I wanted to make a comparison with it and the film from 1971.

Sadly, I didn’t think this movie was as enjoyable as the previous movie. I mean, it was definitely interesting, but it wasn’t something I wanted to go running to the store for afterwards.

Among the things I found myself having mixed opinions about were the direction by Tim Burton and the screenplay by John August.

On the positive side of it, I could tell that Burton and August were obviously quite passionate about the project. When it came to creating the film as a faithful adaption to the book with touches of a filmmaker’s creative flair on the side, the two of them definitely didn’t mess around. The film’s newly-found exploration on Willy Wonka was especially fascinating, and so were the themes it had about family and love.

However, Burton’s direction overall seemed to make everything creepy and weird more than anything else, and despite its efforts to be as emotionally compelling as possible...the film wasn’t the most soul-tugging. The comedy it had wasn’t very great either, largely because the jokes seemed rather flatly executed. Along with that, the film felt too straightforward and quick in many ways, and it hardly carried much complexity despite the efforts of the filmmakers.

The music by Danny Elfman wasn’t the most outstanding, if I may add. I liked that he was at least trying his best, and he did a brilliant job at getting emotionally invested. But, in contrast to many of his other works, such as Sam Raimi’s first and second Spider-Man films, Elfman’s music didn’t seem to carry enough resonance, and it felt like he was hardly pushing the envelope. The songs sung by the Oompa-Loompas and “Wonka’s Welcome Song” were particularly annoying, mainly because of how irritating the singing sounded and how off-tune the melodies were.

But, in spite of the mixed feelings I’ve expressed just now, I’m proud to say that the performances of the cast, casting, characters, and character development were able to save the day.

Just like the performers in the original film, the cast members fit their parts like a glove and gave their characters perfect personality. I particularly admired how into it everyone appeared to be, portraying their characters to where they seemed so real. For instance, Johnny Depp did a marvelous job at making his portrayal and characterization of Willy Wonka as unique and different from Gene Wilder’s version as possible, and he gave the character an added sense of something extraordinarily human. He may not have given one of his best portrayals, but his creativity and abilities as an actor shined perfectly throughout the movie.

In the end, however, the film turned out to be one that I hoped I would enjoy more than anything, but...compared to the 1971 adaption, it’s not as great as I expected it to be. It’s intriguing, and the cast was great. But, the film seemed too overly bizarre for its own good, and it wasn’t the most fun film I ever watched.

So, I rate “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)” three out of five stars.