It's wonderful!

Warner Bros. presents a Tim Burton film, starring Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore. Written by John August and based on a book by Roald Dahl. 115m. PG for quirky situations, action and mild language.

5 stars

In the two and half years since I had dispensed my last five star rating, I had grown a bit despondent that films could no longer meet my heightened expectations. I looked inward first, then outwardly. Was it me, or had the pictures really become increasingly trite?

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” teems with so much imagination that it will restore your faith in the pictures. In a calendar plagued by sequels, remakes and assorted half-baked ideas, “Charlie” shines above them all, offering a trove of delights for both the young and the young at heart.

Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t trample on the original adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book. “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory,” created in 1971, was a vehicle for up and coming comedic talent Gene Wilder. It dropped the book’s primary focus – and, by extension, its heart - when it centralized Wonka, not Charlie Bucket.

It’s an oversight corrected by the partnership of director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp, perhaps the only two people who consistently defy expectations these days. Burton has appropriated the visual palette of his previous film, “Big Fish,” and injected it with fire engine reds and milky chocolate colors. It’s a hybrid pregnant with visual delights, making the candy inside Wonka’s factory look so good you think you just might be able to taste it.

Depp, meanwhile, is not only responsible for reimagining Wonka via Dahl, but for recruiting the film’s central protagonist. With his rather adult command deftly projecting a childlike naïveté, Freddie Highmore was a bit of a scene stealer in “Finding Neverland,” the bio-pic of “Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie.

But it takes two to steal a scene; the thief and his victim. Depp is the sort of an actor talented enough to allow another to upstage him. When the moment is right in this film, he nudges Highmore to lead a pivotal scene.

This is a story in which audiences glean the values of family, dreams, and unconditional love from an impoverished pre-teen living in a bowed, ramshackle shack. The chocolate factory is a welcome distraction, providing a backdrop for the parable.
It’s Wonka who decides, after 15 years, to open up his factory to five lucky children. I’ve never truly understood Wonka’s motivations, but I think Depp has him pegged right as a eccentric reclusive who has more than a few flashes of inspired genius.

The chocolatier tells us that the golden ticket contest was to find a suitable heir to his Wonka empire, but that always seemed a tad suspect. Children go after golden tickets like their parents did for Cabbage Patch Kids 10 years ago, exposing their id and eliciting a primal urge to win. The contest is, in a way, rigged against urchins like Charlie who can barely afford one Wonka bar a year. And I suppose that why we feel a sense of wonderment that, amongst a group of rapscallions, Charlie is the representative for human decency.

There’s Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), whose gluttony paves the way for his discovery of the first ticket. To call him slovenly would be to understate things.

And there’s Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), driven to some sort of insane quest to be the world’s foremost authority on gum chewing. She switched over to Wonka bars after hearing of the contest and is driven, by her underachieving mother, to win the Wonka grand prize.

The petulant Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) was third, demanding her daddy suspend his peanut shucking operation to have his workers unwrap candy bars instead. Her life is dominated by possessing things; her parents are one of her prized captures.
Finally, there’s Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), a violent little boy whose predilections come from too much time in front of the video game console. He outthought Wonka, manipulating the system so that his golden ticket feels like a bit of cheat.

So if Wonka isn’t luring children to his factory as a recruitment tool, does he have other, more sinister, plans? He seems absent of any true sexuality, although the movie does provide a new backstory for his fear of true companionship. He is like the Grinch without the cruelty, needing someone to touch his heart in a way he didn’t know was possible.

It is Charlie who sees, if never suggests, the true correlation between his own life and Wonka’s. Living in a house that evokes equal parts of Lemony Snicket and German expressionism, one easily sees the extraordinary in the otherwise ordinary. Just as Wonka is driven by his creations - and kudos to production designer Alex McDowell for making them so alive - Charlie is encouraged to dream by his family who are spiritually rich, while financially poor.

For fans of the original, there’s much to still love. The Oompa Loompas still oversee production of every Wonka bar (but now all look strangely alike, in the guise of actor Deep Roy). And there’s new songs; those familiar with Dahl’s book will be delighted to hear his zany tunes receive a long overdue treatment.

It’s an delightfully satisfying, visceral experience, watering my once-wilting faith in the movies to inspire, provoke and delight all at the same time. “Charlie and Chocolate Factory” is a high - not from its caffeine-laced cocoa beans, but from the possibilities present in its production.