anh-94946 The best way to describe this movie is Delightfully strange. I was in such a constant state of "what the heck was that" and "excuse me... What?" that couldn't help but enjoy myself. I'll give it 81%.

Paul Evans I grew up reading the book, and of course with the original film, both of which I love. This remake is exactly what you'd expect from Tim Burton, it's somewhat dark, trippy, surreal and somewhat garish. Fans of his will love it, appreciate his style, and enjoy his stamp. The special effects are terrific, it's a visual feast, very colourful, so much going on. The supporting cast are super, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly and even Liz Smith are delightful. The original has such a warmth, the music, songs, but mainly Gene Wilder, and whilst I love Johnny Depp, it's the character's lack of warmth that stops it being a movie I revisit often. The music just isn't good, you could watch it twenty times and not remember a song. Way too much Deep Roy. It has its faults but it's still imaginative, bright and very entertaining.

mbrummer-13538 Visually it's not bad, I find that the children were convincing and they played their roles just fine. Willy Wonka seemed odd (not in an entertaining way). His character seemed shallow and spouted nonsense and giggled alot. Gene's portrayal was deep, he had charisma and he was like a deck of cards. Most of all, Gene was a really good singer and that added more to his role. I give them credit, the chocolate river was pretty cool. In the 70's film, it was a dirty looking river. I watched the "behind the scenes" clips and they put in a lot of effort on working on an actual chocolate river. That alone did bump up my score higher than what I was originally going to set it. In conclusion, I thought the movie could have done better. Visually, it was pretty great and some of the roles played by the children weren't have bad either. The other roles fell much shorter. I'm giving this a 4 because it had potential but, fell short to my expectations.

stormhawk2018 The visions of Dahl and Burton perfectly complement each other (please see Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox as a point of direct contrast here) and the film is therefore faithful to the book in a modern transposition (for instance the updating of Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teevee are prefect, and fully faithful to Dahl's characters). It is acerbic, funny, unsettling, with a good fondant centre, immeasurably superior to the Gene Wilde version I grew up with. However, the British accents referring to 'candy' grates massively: please choose one or the other.