"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

July 15, 2005

I’d like to say Tim Burton’s CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY plays better now than it did then, but for me it’s the reverse. I can guess based on some costumes I saw when I went to see the 2023 movie WONKA that there are people who grew up on this one and still like it, but for people my age I felt alone in believing it even had some good qualities. It was disappointing because I had faith that Depp would have an interesting take on Wonka, and that faith was not rewarded. But I could point to many things I liked about it, so I felt a little protective when people said it was worthless.

SUMMER 2005I’m partial to both the 1964 book by Roald Dahl (or at least the version of it that existed in the ‘80s) and the 1971 film by Mel Stuart starring Gene Wilder. After a teacher read the book to us in class I decided Dahl was my favorite author – I read James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Danny the Champion of the World, The Twits, George’s Marvelous Medicine, The BFG, The Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes, I’m not sure what else. I remember waiting what seemed like forever for The Witches on inter-library loan, and it was worth it. His dark sense of humor really appealed to me. His descriptions of awful people next to those scratchy Quentin Blake drawings. When I found out he wrote “Lamb to the Slaughter” (the short story turned into the Alfred Hitchcock episode about the woman who killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb) I was amazed. When I found out he had a book for adults called Switch Bitch I giggled. (But I never read that one.)

I vaguely remember seeing WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY for the first time on cable at the babysitter’s house. I don’t think I’d known there was a movie. I assumed it was current, didn’t know until I was older that it came out before I did. I watched it many times at all different ages, coming to appreciate its famously menacing slasher movie undercurrents in children’s movie packaging, along with everything else about it.

But I also loved Burton, who in 2005 had only really completely fumbled with PLANET OF THE APES. I thought BIG FISH was the Tim Burton movie for people who think Tim Burton movies are too weird, but I kinda liked it anyway. At that time the idea of him doing this story seemed like a dream come true, and Depp was still a brilliant actor reuniting with his EDWARD SCISSORHANDS/ED WOOD/SLEEPY HOLLOW director for the first time since becoming Captain Jack Sparrow. It didn’t seem like it could go this wrong.

The script is by John August, known for GO and the two CHARLIE’S ANGELS movies, but he’d done BIG FISH. I did and do appreciate him using parts of the book that were not in the earlier movie: Mr. Bucket (Noah Taylor, LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER)’s job screwing on toothpaste lids, the story about Wonka making a chocolate palace for Prince Pondicherry (Nitin Ganatra, BRIDE AND PREJUDICE), the squirrels. In theory I like that all but one of the songs in the movie come straight from the rhymes in the book (except they just don’t make great songs, and in one case the music is criminally cheesy). I also like some of the new parts they invented like Wonka’s scary dentist father (Christopher Lee, ATTACK OF THE CLONES) and Charlie turning down the factory until he’s allowed to move his house and whole family inside.

My favorite addition remains the most memorable scene for me: when the factory gates open for the contest winners a little stage opens up with a show of It’s a Small World inspired animatronic dolls singing an annoying song about “Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, the amazing chocolatier.” At the climax of the song there are some spinning sparkler pinwheel things but they cause the dolls to catch on fire and horrifyingly melt as the recording gets garbled and slows to a stop. Then suddenly Wonka himself is standing among the kids delightedly applauding the show.

(And I had forgotten this but much later there’s a gag about the factory having a burn ward for dolls.)

The highlight that persists for more than one scene is the choice to cast Droopy McCool himself, Deep Roy, as all of the Oompa Loompas, digitally shrunk down to doll size and acting in many different roles including as Willy’s psychiatrist and (in one of the best gags) revealed on screen at the end as the guy who has been narrating the movie the whole time. (The actual voice is Geoffrey Holder of BOOMERANG and the 7-Up commercials. A good choice, though I thought he was Christopher Lee.)

Despite the fairly ugly poster above this is a nice looking movie, with great production design by Alex McDowell (THE LAWNMOWER MAN, THE CROW, CRYING FREEMAN, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, FIGHT CLUB, also director of Sade’s “Paradise” video). I love the lack of era specificity, the German expressionist angles of the Bucket family shack…


…(Burton definitely sketched that one), the weird Wonka factory bicycles, the all-white TV room and goggles. And though it doesn’t make this one better, it is nice to see a much lusher version of the chocolate river and candy plants, which look cheap and inedible in the original.


It’s also great (in fact Oscar nominated) work by costume designer Gabriella Pescucci (ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, VAN HELSING), making the Buckets look Dickensian but giving the Beauregardes matching powder blue velour joggers and puffy silver jackets.

By the way, Missi Pyle (JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, HOME ALONE 4) deserves more to do as Violet’s mother, but she stands out with her weird smiles and quasi-empowering slogans about being a “winner” and a “driven young woman.”

The kids are all perfect in their roles; maybe Burton doesn’t get enough credit for being good with young actors. Freddie Highmore (Charlie) was recommended by Depp, having been in FINDING NEVERLAND, and this actually led to a prolific career as a child actor, including starring in the ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES series and voicing Astro Boy, before playing Norman Bates on Bates Motel and then starring in The Good Doctor for seven seasons. The other breakout is AnnaSophia Robb, who played Violet Beauregarde. She was later in BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, and SOUL SURFER, but around here we recognize her as the co-star of REBEL RIDGE.

The main later credit for Jordan Fry, who plays Mike Teavee, is as one of the voices in MEET THE ROBINSONS. But he’s a really good take on the character, looks like some kid in a ‘90s fruit snack commercial or some shit and with a bratty teen boy aggression to him. He brags that he hates chocolate, and his response to the candy plants is to run over and start stomping on one of the mushrooms.

Some of the, uh, old-timey cultural depictions are not great. I don’t know about the market in Marrakesh where people trade livestock for Wonka bars. And I’ll see what CJ says about the Gloops as representatives of Germany.


I do strongly believe that this candy store in Tokyo is really cool looking.


I noticed sometimes on Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) and Wonka, and possibly on some of the other children, that there seems to be a digital airbrushing effect to make their complexions perfectly smooth, almost like porcelain, or like Campbell’s Soup kids, and maybe even enhancing the perfection of their teeth and wideness of their smiles? I felt then and now that it looks creepy, and I think we all agree on that, but to me that was clearly the intent, and I appreciate it. Others surely disagree. I can at least say definitively that this was a novel visual effect that has not become a cliche.


The opening credits very much mirror those of MARS ATTACKS!, which used computer animation to depict the factory-like gathering of flying saucers to invade the earth. This one is many thousands of chocolate bars being manufactured, golden tickets being placed inside five of them and packed to be shipped to five different cities, and Danny Elfman’s music has a similar feeling of escalating menace.

So yes, there are many individual facets of this movie that I admire. The deadly flaw remains Depp’s performance as Wonka. I thought at the time that he was riffing on Michael Jackson, which I still suspect, but maybe to less of an extent than I thought at the time. There also seems to be a little bit of Pee-wee Herman in his voice, which is always a mistake for anyone who is not Pee-wee Herman. Mainly his take is that Wonka is a stunted recluse. He talks like a shy little boy and also hasn’t really talked to anyone for many years (which seems disrespectful to the Oompa Loompas). The joke that Wonka is kind of crazy and pretends not to know he’s scaring these people with, for example, his Great Glass Elevator that’s about to crash through the ceiling, mostly feels more calculated than when Wilder did it.

For me Depp’s Wonka now plays no better than it did at the time, possibly worse (my feelings toward Depp no longer being charitable), and therefore the telling of this classic story sort of falls apart too. We still have the benefit of the nice, humble, poor kid winning the contest. For the first time the scene of Mr. Salt (James Fox, THE MIGHTY QUINN) buying up shipments of Wonka Bars and having the employees of his nut factory unwrap them all day struck me as, you know, practically a documentary. One family uses their business empire to buy a ticket while another eagerly follows the news on a black and white TV with a coat hanger antenna and in a newspaper pulled out of the garbage.

But when Wonka is completely off-putting and annoying even to us, when we don’t feel like we’re on his side (and there aren’t any sweet songs to make him seem like he has any positive qualities other than his candy-inventing vision) it creates a strange situation: I start feeling sorry for those little monsters, like it’s not really their fault they’ve turned out this way so far and I don’t really want to chuckle along with some horrible weirdo scaring them. The story seems a little too mean. I never felt that way before.

It does at least help that they have the scene from the book with the kids leaving the factory, transformed but alive. Violet being more flexible and doing animated gymnastics, and post-taffy-stretcher Mike looking like a flattened, gawky teen really made me laugh. For what it’s worth there are other dumb little jokes I enjoyed throughout the movie, like when Grandpa Joe (David Kelly, MEAN MACHINE) flashes back to 20 years ago when he worked for Willy Wonka and he’s already a very old man…

…or when Mr. Bucket gets a new job repairing the machine that replaced him in his previous job, or when young Willy Wonka (Blair Dunlop) appears to be part of a globetrotting montage but he turns out to just be visiting a “flags of the world” exhibit.

Ha, that’s a good joke.

I did not remember this, but CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY got good reviews? 83% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, anyway. It had the widest IMAX release up to that time and became the eighth highest grossing movie of 2005 (seventh in the U.S., fourth in the U.K.).

Dahl is credited as the writer of the original WILLY WONKA but he actually just wrote an outline, and he hated the uncredited rewrites by David Seltzer (THE OMEN) and Robert Kaufman (DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN), as well as the casting of Wilder and the score, which he found sappy. The Dahl estate started trying to do a new version in the early ‘90s, with pretty good taste in directors – Spike Jonze was on their short list. Scott Frank (OUT OF SIGHT) wrote a screenplay at one point, with Nicolas Cage briefly attached to star, which now seems like such a missed opportunity. Damn. But the director was going to be Gary Ross (PLEASANTVILLE), then Rob Minkoff (fucking STUART LITTLE). Then holy shit they got Martin Scorsese… until he left to do THE AVIATOR. Warner Brothers president Alan F. Horn said hey, don’t worry, I have an ace in the hole. An Ace VENTURA in the hole called Jim Carrey as Willy Wonka directed by Tom Shadyac! But Dahl’s widow Felicity said abso the fucking lutely no god damn way in hell (in polite British) and thank god (it seemed at the time) they all finally agreed on Tim Burton.

But, shit, here we are. At least WONKA was surprisingly good. And at least we who are not Roald Dahl love the earlier version. A bigger tragedy than the lack of a second good CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY adaptation is that Burton has remained mostly stuck in this mode of glossy/messy i.p. adapter. He has since movie-fied a famous musical, riffed on two Disney classics, adapted a TV show and his own short film and a YA novel and did a sequel. The closest to original projects in the subsequent decades were CORPSE BRIDE (inspired by a folk tale) and BIG EYES (based on a true story). I didn’t hate most of these but didn’t love any of them like I do his earlier movies. I think I’m alone on this but I believe the best of them is DARK SHADOWS, also starring Depp as a pale weirdo and written (partly) by August.

tie-ins:

There were many CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY action figures and toys, including an 18” talking Willy Wonka recently listed at $341.26 on ebay (but it didn’t sell). There were also collector cards and a video game for PlayStation 2. The weirdest thing I found is a reproduction of Wonka’s cane filled with candy, but it’s from a numbered limited edition of 2000 so that is listed for $1,500 with the warning “Obviously the candy IS NOT FOR COMSUMPTION after almost 20 years of the making of the movie. Again, CANDY SHOULD NOT BE EATEN!”

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2025 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Reviews, Family, Fantasy/Swords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

16 Responses to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

  1. What is interesting to me is how this seems to be the Tim Burton movie that nobody has strong opinions about. I don’t think even back then anybody would say “This his his worst!”, even if one would ignore his famously disowned PLANET OF THE APES. But there is no way in hell that anybody would pick this as their favourite Burton flick either, unless they only saw three or less from him and none of them were from the 20th century. It’s really just sitting there in his filmography without stirring any shit. Not forgotten, but neither overly loved or hated.

    I rewatched this around last christmas and still mostly enjoyed it. Depp’s performance got over a bit better for me than for you, but I still feel there was a bit too much “MAD TV parody of Michael Jackson” in it. As mentioned in the review for WONKA, the whole Willy Wonka thing (and Roald Dahl in general) is far from being an important part of German popculture. I would go so far and say that this version was for most of us here their first encounter with the story. The one thing that rubbed me wrong, was how, despite the imagination on display, square the story actually is. Maybe even a bit “faschist”, in lack of a better word. This is a story about a kid who is getting rewarded for obeying authority and following all the rules, while all the ugly and obnoxious other kids are being punished in horrifying ways. Maybe it works better in book form.

    And there are worse stereotypes than the overweight, chocolate and sausage addicted German. At least none of them wore Lederhosen, was a secret or not so secret Nazi or spoke with das crazy German akzent ja, where they insert some random deutsche worts with das bad grammar into every sentence schweinehunds schnitzel Nena. Mrs Gloop was even played by a quite prolific German actress.

    BTW, I do think that this is one of Elfman’s most underrated scores. The songs are hit and miss, with the best giving Oingo Boingo vibes, but the score part is really cool.

  2. I watched this film recently and I actually liked it a lot more than I did at the time. I read Dahl as a kid and knew the Wonka books. Loved the new Wonka, which is stronger than the Burton film, but I find the older I get the more I like this film. I enjoy Wonka being awkward and crazy, his maliciousness to the kids and the parents, that he’s always messing with them while having being weird as a defence.

    I watched the Wilder version as well recently and I have to say I can’t stand it. I never really could but on rewatch I found it to be horrible outside of a few songs, with cheap sets, no consistent tone visually or with the actors, and a need to explain everything and rob the magic of the tale. I don’t think the book can be adapted as a perfect version as so much of it takes place with spare precision that allows you to add in a lot yourself in your mind, that can become over-produced and obvious if shown as a series of images, but I would much rather watch the Burton film, warts and all, than the older version.

  3. Simon Underwood

    July 18th, 2025 at 4:01 pm

    Thanks for this – I felt so alone at the time, and ever since, when people bring it up, or it’s on TV in the vincinity – of actively hating this. I went to see it in the cinema because Burton! Depp! of course and came out after genuinely angry. All the stuff you talk about here, about not being on the side of Wonka, so it begins to feel cruel, I felt then (also how I feel about some aspects of Mars Attacks!). In particular the Veruca squirrel
    bit is… that’s an assault scene, and to hear people around me in the cinema laughing so much at it was incredibly disturbing. As you say, their behaviour is all more down to the parents than the kids.

    I *did* though, appreciate that last scene of them coming out. And when Wonka was first announced, bounced my own IP idea from it – Violet Delights, in which a newly stretch-powers Violet, having bonded with the Ooompa Loompas who saved her life, returns to the factory to infiltrate it, free the rest of them, and overthrow the newly installed bootlicker CEO Charlie.

  4. Huh, they completely ripped off that ‘flags of the world’ gag in one of the Spongebob movies, where they do what looks like a globetrotting tour montage that turns out to be them just walking in front of postcards.

    It’s amazing just how much of a difference there is in Burton’s output after Sleepy Hollow; It really feels like something switched off inside him as the century rolled over. I only liked, not loved Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but it felt like a huge return to form.

  5. Shit, it’s one of those weeks, I guess, because I love this one, too, and I love Depp’s performance. My boys and I still like to say “Good morning starshine, the earth says hello” and “I greet you warmly by the hand” to one another spontaneously from time to time. I’m no Dahl-head, but I feel like this is a world that deserves and benefits greatly from Burton’s particularly skewed sensibilities. Depp’s Wonka is not likeable, but he’s original, deeply idiosyncratic, and I find him to be a much more interesting and ultimately sympathetic take than Gene Wilder’s. He’s a weirdo awkward loner monomanical perfectionist genius artist. He’s trying to transcend that and reach out and share something, but damnit it’s hard work, and he’s no good at it. I think it’s a pretty brilliant take. Anyway, looks great, excellent worldbuilding, colorful and appropriately cartoonish characters, excellent casting and performances across the board, weird as hell, full of all kinds of great random bits and bobs (Christopher Lee, Deep Roy, narrator, all the good stuff Vern metnions), and anchored in an all-timer ballsy, swinging for the fences portrayal of a beloved character that — what can I say — works for me.

  6. grimgrinningchris

    July 19th, 2025 at 4:06 am

    I spent years after this movie maybe being a possibility was first announced in the mid to late 90s saying that nobody but Burton should be let near a new Wonka movie. Then I finally got it and absolutely hated it. I haven’t seen it in full since the theater back then. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe I will have softened on it a bit if I try it again. It was my niece’s first introduction and her favorite movie as a kid though so I dunno.

  7. I only saw this in full for the first time about 5 years ago and was surprised by how much I liked it. Maybe my expectations were lowered by that 12 or so year period inbetween it being a popular recent film and becoming seen as nostalgic where you only heard bad things about it. It may have also helped that in that time I had heard about and seen in passing on TV the perhaps second most controversial element, giving Wonka a kind of clichéd dad issues backstory. I sympathise with that complaint, but I suppose in that time I guess I’d just come to accept, though still not really like, that kind of demystifying as What Hollywood Does. Honestly Vern’s review mostly reads as pretty positive, but I guess if you can’t stand Depp’s performance it spoils the rest of it.

    I did read the book when I was a kid and saw the film once, and I liked then but I’m not particularly attached to either, which may help. Also I still think of the GLASS ELEVATOR book as one of the biggest sequel drop-offs ever.

  8. The creepy “airbrushed” look of this movie foreshadowed those godawful AI- generated fake images you now see everywhere on social media by 20 years.

  9. Comrade Question

    July 19th, 2025 at 4:59 pm

    “Also I still think of the GLASS ELEVATOR book as one of the biggest sequel drop-offs ever.”

    It wasn’t great, but the vermicious knids creeped me out so much as a kid, that it was worth it for that alone.

  10. grimgrinningchris

    July 20th, 2025 at 5:12 pm

    Also. Deep Roy is a suave dude and can hold his own at the bar. I still don’t like this movie though.

  11. Tim Burton was probably my first “favorite director”. I even liked APES. I vaguely remember this one being disappointing, and his filmography was mostly downhill for me from there. This was the first in a string of four dull adaptations in a row centered around annoying Depp performances. I did enjoy the feature-length FRANKENWEENIE and BIG EYES, and BEETLEJUICE SQUARED was fun but slight.

  12. I said it before and most likely under more than one Burton review, but one of the intersting things about him is that nobody seems to be able to agree on the point when he lost is mojo of if he even lost it at all. I mean, we all agree that his 80s/90s stuff was better than his 21st century movies, but still, for many people is MARS ATTACKS either his first stinker or his last good one, with SLEEPY HOLLOW either a great rebound and his last good one or his first bad one. Of course nobody would name APES as his career highlight, but that one was followed by BIG FISH, which I remember being a legitimate Oscar buzz movie. Nobody seems to care either way about CHARLIE these days, but as mentioned in the review, it was well received at that time, but even here I heard from many people that this was after BIG FISH the one that made people lose faith in him. Of course that one was followed by CORPSE BRIDE (if we wanna count the animated ones which he is credited as director for), SWEENY TODD, which only received a certain amount of backlash because apparently not enough people knew that there was singing (Well “singing”) in it, but was otherwise very well received and then followed by ALICE, which is for me the first one that I didn’t like at all, yet it also made a billion dollar at the box office. DARK SHADOWS (which I personally like a lot) landed for most people with a thud, but BIG EYES was again hailed as return to form, although it made for me clear that a Tim Burton movie without any Tim Burton stuff in it is not worth my time. MISS PEREGRINE landed with a thud, but maybe mostly due to a mix of oversaturation of Young Adult movies with this one being too fucked up for its target audience. And I believe if more people would watch DUMBO they would appreciate it for trying to do something different than the cartoon and being a fun heist movie in the last 3rd. Which brings us to BEETLE2CE, which again is, depending who you ask, either a return to (almost) form or a shitty sequel from a hack who should’ve quit years ago. And the popculture phenomenon that was WEDNESDAY seems to be more about Jenna Ortega and her character than the man whose visual fingerprints are even all over the episodes that he didn’t direct.

    So yeah. Tim Burton. What’s up with that?

  13. grimgrinningchris

    July 21st, 2025 at 12:29 pm

    So I’ve got a friend. His kid is going to seminary to be a priest. I see where this is going. My son, the father… What’s up with that???

    Anyway, I will give Burton everything up to and including, Mars Attacks and Sleepy Hollow, though the cracks were starting to show on both of those. Planet of the Apes isn’t THAT bad and its makeup is some of Baker’s best work. Wahlburg is a dud and the ending is diabolically nonsensical but I thought everyone else was great. Outside of having Glen Shaddix and HMC and Lisa Marie in it, it just doesn’t seem like a Burton movie at all. A passable, early 00s dumb remake of a classic. Still the cracks get deeper there. Big Fish was a HUGE jump back for him after seeming like he was losing himself, but even so and even though I think it’s a really good movie, I am very rarely motivated to revisit it. Same with Sweeney Todd. And I love Sondheim, but while Depp’s vocals are passable at times, less so in others… but everyone else can sure as shit sing and it looks amazing. Alice is hideous and noisy and just all of his worst tendencies amplified like he wrapped them in tin foil and put them in a microwave. Just awful. I never saw Corpse Bride or Frankenweenie (the original short, yes… the movie no). Also never saw Peregrine, despite it having Eva Green and me being a human being with eyes and hormones. I love Dark Shadows and of “modern” Burton is the one I go back to the most. It’s oddly, kind of a comfort movie for me. Big Eyes, I recall liking a lot, but have only seen it the one time.

  14. I also love BIG FISH. It’s earnest, treacle-y, as safe and Oscar bait-y as anything Burton has done, and it’s also kind of, leisurely and self-indulgent in meandering its way to its cliched feel-good ending. But I love it. I watched it again in the last 12 years, and it held up for me.

    I also watched SLEEPY HOLLOW this past year in the first time in over 20 years, and it kind of lost my interest, though it was pretty and ornate and fussy in its Tim Burton way. Liked it okay.

    I’ve made my thoughts on BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE known. I knew was a little off while watching it and while walking out of the theatre, and my attitude only curdled with time, though I’ll eventually give it another try.

  15. I also love BIG FISH. It’s earnest, treacle-y, as safe and Oscar bait-y as anything Burton has done, and it’s also kind of, leisurely and self-indulgent in meandering its way to its cliched feel-good ending.

    While it’s all of those things, it also felt like it was the first time Burton was honestly engaged with the material in what seemed like forever.

  16. Maybe a hot take, but I think most of the original movie that isn’t Gene Wilder kinda sucks? Like boy I don’t like the kid that plays Charlie, Grandpa Joe should be shot. Some of the other kids are great, but if Wilder wasn’t as absolutely enthralling in that movie as he was then I think it would be mostly forgotten.

    This always felt like the opposite, the rest of the movie was way better, but Wonka himself was the weakpoint so it kinda falls apart.

    I guess if you have to have one or the other, a mediocre film with Gene fuckin Wilder in will win.

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