CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005) *1/2 Inferior re-make, in every meaningful way, of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and further away from Roald Dahl's wonderful original story. Still, it's not entirely without charm, and it's clear that several really bright people had incongruent ideas to make such a mess. If Johnny Depp's Keith Richards imitation worked nicely in Pirates of the Caribbean, he's at least less charming manifesting a melange of Michael Jackson, Church Lady, and Geena Davis here. Gene Wilder was nearly as weird in the same role, but did a better job of allowing his humanity to show through. A less fundamentally (psychologically) flawed Wonka? Whatever. I would not object to some hack declaring Tim Burton's sets to be "simply breathtaking," but for me they're more irritating, largely because of my objections to the action going on around them. Yes, that's not fair, but a one-sided rendering of Dahl where everyone is nauseating is every bit as limited as one where they're all charismatic would be false. Danny Elfman's songs are explosions of good ideas, thrown together in a manner rendering each nearly worthless and absolutely unnecessary. To be fair he was clearly trying to idea overload, and you can't get there without ideas. Since they were playing so fast and loose with Dahl's work anyway, I wish that they would have worked in a bigger role for Francesca Hunt. As Veruka Salt's mum she looks like she knows what's funny about trophy wives, and she couldn't possibly have been less interesting or more disgusting than Missi Pyle (though if someone ever makes an all-white-cast satire on the Bush administration, she'd be a perfect Condoleeza Rice).
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