Sugar And Spice
Burton delivers sweet subversion in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

Tim Burton embraces color with a vengence in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Best known for his dark, rapturously noir, neo-Gothic extravaganzas, his first boldly colored film, Mars Attacks! was a misfire, devoid of plot or purpose—as befits a story based on a pack of gory trading cards. (The reaction sent him scampering back to the comfy gloom of Sleepy Hollow.) He opted for rainbow hues again in the tall tale Big Fish, attempting (with uneven success) to meld lush fairy tale elements into a more-or-less reality-based dramatic stoyline.

With Charlie, Burton finds the perfect vehicle for wedding his wryly demented vision to a vibrant color palette. Within the fantastical candyland of the title, Burton's visual imagination runs riot. A factory floor is a whirlpool of blue and white lollipop stripes. A river of chocolate runs through an undulating, bright green candy swamp, dotted with huge pastel toadstools that belong in an acid trip. A giant dragon-shaped boat of magenta candy is rowed down the river by 50 pygmy oarsmen in sky-blue satin jumpsuits. Poofy swirls of cotton candy are shaved from pink sheep.

Happily, it all adds up to something. Burton's film is not a remake of the 1971 Gene Wilder movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but Burton's personal take on the original Roald Dahl book (Dahl's script for Willy Wonka was doctored for the screen), with its sometimes astringent view of children and childhood intact. Putting his own spin on Charlie, Burton comes up with one of the most cheerfully subversive kids' films since The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T—which, like many other films, Burton references shamelessly.

Burton's frequent co-conspirator, Johnny Depp, is on board in another skillful comic turn as Willy Wonka, enigmatic proprietor of a fabulous candy empire on the edge of an anonymous grey city. In a neglected pocket of genteel squalor in the city's shadow perches the sagging one-room shack of the poor, but loving Bucket family. Warm-hearted little Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore, Depp's co-star from Finding Neverland) lives there with his housewife mum (Helena Bonham Carter), his kindly Dad (Noah Taylor), who works in a toothpaste factory, and four elderly grandparents. Charlie's only toy is a model of the Wonka factory he's building from misshapen toothpaste tube caps. He can only afford to eat one chocolate bar a year, on his birthday.

Grandpa Joe (David Kelly), once worked in Wonka's candy factory, before Wonka fired his workers and cloaked his operation in secrecy. But from his remote factory towers, Wonka announces that five golden tickets have been inserted into random Wonka chocolate bars; children who find them will get a personal tour of Wonka's amazing factory.

Burton wisely lavishes time and care on the loving dynamics of the Buckets. After much trial and error, Charlie finds a golden ticket and joins four other kids on the tour who personify the most unpleasant traits of childhood: gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled brat rich-girl Veruca Salt, arrogant competitor Violet Beauregarde, and violent, video game-obsessed Mike Teavee. (They could be the anti-Spice Girls from Hell: Greedy, Bossy, Snotty, and Surly.) Wonka throws open his doors with a hidden agenda of his own, and a richly deserved, if unexpected, fate awaits each of his guest children.

Bearing a distressing resemblance to Michael Jackson (right down to a pallor so unnaturaaly washed-out, he looks grey), Depp puts a goofy, slapstick spin on Wonka—which suits Burton's idea of a man in a state of arrested adolescence with unresolved family issues of his own. (A candy-hating dentist father, played with relish by Christopher Lee.) Depp adopts an eager, adolescent voice, and a boy's distaste for mushy stuff; when one of the bratty girls tries to score Brownie points by hugging him, his expression of horror is priceless.

Burton throws in plenty of sight gags in homage to his own favorite movies. The monolith from 2001: A Space Oddyssey, of course, becomes a giant chocolate bar. When mini-Mike is trapped in a TV screen, he bleats "Help me!" in Vincent Price's squeaky voice from The Fly, and the round room full of nut-sorting squirrels recalls the keyboard-pounding boys of Dr. T. Burton's film is often funny, charming, gross, and a little sinister—like childhood itself.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY With Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, and David Kelly. Written by John August. From the book by Raold Dahl. Directed by Tim Burton. A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG. 115 minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, July 21, 2005