E-Mail This Article to a Friend The candyman can’t Tim Burton’s dark Chocolate leaves a bitter taste BY BRETT MICHEL
	CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY Directed by Tim Burton | Written by John August based on the book by Roald Dahl | With Johnny Depp + Freddie Highmore + David Kelly + Deep Roy + Christopher Lee + Helena Bonham Carter | A Warner Bros. release | 119 minutes Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Circle/Chestnut Hill + suburbs
	Finding Neverland? Burton and company discuss . . . "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it . . . " These simple lyrics — embedded from numerous childhood viewings of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — flutter through my head as I arrive on Paradise Island in the Bahamas for a series of mini press conferences for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The ornate theme-park-like setting of the Atlantis Resort and Casino proves a fitting environment in which to discuss a film about a reclusive, flamboyantly eccentric, pasty-faced millionaire who welcomes young children to visit the colorful fun house he’s fashioned for himself. Does a certain recently acquitted pop icon come to mind? "It never crossed my mind, oddly enough," offers Johnny Depp says through gold-capped teeth. (He’s shooting the first of two sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean here in the Bahamas.) "Michael Jackson was not an inspiration or ingredient for the character at all. A few people have mentioned it, and it kind of took me by surprise. There’s the look, a little bit, but you could just as easily think of some reclusive germophobe like Howard Hughes." "No, I didn’t think about that," adds 13-year-old Freddie Highmore, who was elated by the chance to work alongside his Finding Neverland co-star again. "It was just amazing. Johnny’s a really special person. He’s better than chocolate." "I think that’s really stretching it," bristles legendary producer Richard Zanuck (Jaws). "I don’t know why people — and this isn’t the first time it’s been brought up — have got the impression that Johnny patterned it after this character. It’s an ill-founded perception. I haven’t seen Michael Jackson wearing a top hat recently." Tim Burton puts the issue to rest once and for all. "Here's the deal, okay? Michael Jackson likes children; Willy Wonka can't stand them. To me, that's a huge difference in the whole persona thing." He laughs. "He's got some problems, but we all have problems, you know? It says more about the people making that reference . . . " So what was the inspiration for this new Wonka? "In my early research, I started thinking about memories of children’s-show hosts from when I was five or six years old," says Depp. He remembers "how odd it was, the way they spoke: that bizarre musical rhythm; the cadence to their speech. I took that and made it one of the main ingredients." But though Burton is vocal about his disdain for the ’71 picture, both he and Depp praise Gene Wilder (who it’s reported isn’t too thrilled with the notion of Burton’s film). "I think he’s great," Burton says. "None of us on the production were trying to top him. Our goal, except for the little bit of back story, was to try to be a little bit more true to the spirit of the book." Depp acknowledges that he can’t erase his memory of Gene Wilder. "So I just made a sharp left turn." Now, audiences can decide whether that turn was toward Neverland. _BM Charlie And The Chocolate Factory's official Web site Roald Dahl's official Web site

Director Tim Burton, one of the cinema’s most visually inventive storytellers, has never seemed compelled to present a sustained narrative. (The 1994 Ed Wood is a rare exception.) Even such landmark fare as Batman (1989), with Michael Keaton’s brooding and Jack Nicholson’s scene stealing, is remembered more for its production design than for its half-hearted attempt to tell a story.

With the release of 2003’s Big Fish, a more mature Burton seemed to emerge. To his trademark visual sensibilities he added story and character; the layered, emotionally rich ending was something he had approached just once before, with Edward Scissorhands (1990). After the triumph of Big Fish, Burton decided to film a new adaptation of the late Roald Dahl’s beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one in which Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and 1999’s Sleepy Hollow) would play reclusive candy maker Willy Wonka. As dream projects go, this one couldn’t miss.

Or could it? As creative as anything Burton has put on film, the first half-hour introduces us to "ordinary little boy" Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore, Depp’s talented Finding Neverland co-star) and his family: four elderly grandparents and his mother and father. Charlie’s family are desperately poor: their home, which resembles a shack and sports more leaky holes than the Ted Williams Tunnel, has only one bed (shared by all four grandparents, who haven’t set foot off it for 20 years), and Charlie’s father (Noah Taylor) makes barely enough money at the toothpaste factory to provide for his extended family. The only food they can afford is cabbage soup, which Charlie’s mother (Helena Bonham Carter, off-screen mother of Burton’s son) prepares for every meal. As horrible as this set-up sounds, we know from the opening narration that Charlie is "the luckiest boy in the world — he just didn’t know it yet."

Willy Wonka, who hasn’t been seen for nearly 15 years, announces that he will open the doors to his chocolate factory and reveal "all of its secrets and magic" to the five lucky children who find randomly placed Golden Tickets wrapped within Wonka chocolate bars. The first to find a ticket is gluttonous Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz); he’s followed by spoiled Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), champion gum chewer Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), video-game addict (in the book he’s addicted to TV) Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), and Charlie, who brings along his "grandpa Joe" (Waking Ned Devine’s David Kelly).

These early scenes, including a wonderful side story involving an Indian Prince and his palace made of chocolate, hew much closer to the spirit of Dahl’s endlessly inventive text than Mel Stuart’s 1971 adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (a box-office failure that has gained legions of fans through TV and video). But that only heightens the film’s main failing, and it’s a doozy. Depp’s decision to play Wonka as a children’s-show host ("like Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Green Jeans") merged with the visage of Vogue editor Anna Wintour (though I’d say he looks more like Faye Dunaway by way of Michael Jackson) is one of his rare missteps. Further distorted by Burton’s insistence that Willy "can’t stand children," this Howard Hughes of confectioners is a Wonka wholly antithetical to the jovial bullshit artist whom Dahl described.

Burton may protest that the ’71 adaptation isn’t a faithful one — and indeed, even Dahl is said to have been unhappy with it — but fans of that picture will likely find much to dislike in this new version. Long-time Burton collaborator Danny Elfman might have lifted lyrics directly from Dahl’s prose, but his uninspired orchestrations have nothing on the hummable compositions of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. The casting was universally better in the earlier film (no question Stuart was a better director of children), and that extends to that film’s Willy. As played by Gene Wilder, in one of his great performances, Willy’s an avuncular man of mystery. Here that mystery is gone, replaced by a simple-minded back story. Borrowing from their Big Fish story arc, Burton and screenwriter John August take a magical elevator journey into father-son bathos. It’s the final miscalculation in their boring, tasteless confection.