Of course, Burton's world, for all its weirdness, is by now a familiar place. Lately, though, it hasn't been as much fun to visit as it used to be. His recent films -- Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish -- have seemed at once overwrought and curiously inert, lacking the wit of Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Mars Attacks! or the soulful expressionism of Batman and Edward Scissorhands. But in this case the source material seems to have reawakened the director's imagination, as he has found both Dahl and his most famous creation to be kindred spirits.
The secret of Dahl's charm, and Wonka's, is that neither one seems to be an entirely nice person. Or, rather, neither has much use for the condescending sweetness that some adults adopt in the belief that children will mistake it for niceness. Dahl's sensibility was gleefully punitive; he was a scourge of bullies, brats and scolds, and a champion of unfussy decency against all manner of beastliness. The four children besides little Charlie Bucket who win entry to Wonka's factory are marvelously awful embodiments of ordinary vices, and Burton and the screenwriter, John August (who also wrote the script for Big Fish), have brought their awfulness discreetly up to date.
Violet Beauregarde (AnnaSophia Robb) is not merely an obsessive gum chewer, but a ruthlessly competitive power-pixie with a matching mom and shelves full of trophies in her suburban Atlanta home. Mike Teavee's antisocial tendencies, fed by the television Dahl loathed, have been compounded by video games. Far from a couch potato, the boy (played by Jordan Fry) is a sociopathic embodiment of the currently voguish theory that such entertainment makes children smarter.
Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) is still a glutton, of course, and Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) a spoiled rich girl. For his part, Charlie (Freddie Highmore, who also played opposite Depp in Finding Neverland) is a child of picturesque poverty. His home, with its caved-in roof and single room dominated by a bed full of grandparents (including the marvelous Irish actor David Kelly as Grandpa Joe), are as true to Dahl's book as anything in the movie.
But most of all there is Willy Wonka, the latest -- and perhaps the strangest -- of Depp's eccentric characterizations. Jack Sparrow, the louche buccaneer in Pirates of the Caribbean, put many viewers in mind of Keith Richard. There has already been some debate about possible real-life models for Wonka. The preternaturally smooth features and high-pitched voice -- as well as the fantasy kingdom into which selected children are invited -- may suggest Michael Jackson. Depp, in a recent interview, has dropped the name of the Vogue editor Anna Wintour. To me, the lilting, curiously accented voice sounded like an unholy mash-up of Mr Rogers and Truman Capote, but really, who knows? The best thing about this Wonka, who tiptoes on the narrow boundary between whimsy and creepiness, is that he defies assimilation or explanation.
Luckily, though, the sumptuous, eerie look and mood of the movie make it possible to ignore this dispiriting and superfluous adherence to convention. There is simply too much pleasure to be found in Wonka's world to get too hung up about his relationship with his dad. The real lesson of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is -- or should be -- that pleasure and curiosity are their own rewards. "Candy doesn't have to have a point," Charlie says to the skeptical Mike Teavee. "That's why it's candy."
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