Mmm...not sure what I thought of this one. It's fun, and gleefully looks the part, but I can't shake the feeling that it's also on the insubstantial side. Part of the problem here is that I'm holding it up against previous Tim Burton films, and the book, and the previous screen adaptation (even though I only have vague impressions of those latter two) - compared to most mainstream fare, it's amazingly weird. This Willy Wonka has a nasty streak, but it manifests itself in dismissiveness and aloofness rather than appearing as the working through of any genuine malevolence, and he's a sympathetic character, his back story filled in and his quirks 'explained' (having chuckled at the craziness throughout, the first thing I said to Nenad afterwards was 'awwww', at the sweetness of the film's ending).
There's a certain mawkishness to much of Burton's work (one of the things which makes me nervous about watching Big Fish), which is generally balanced by the more fantastic aspects of his films and a sense of how far to go (I'm thinking particularly of Edward Scissorhands here). That's present here, too, and while at first I wasn't 100% sold on the spin he puts on the Wonka character, it's ringing a bit more truly now (I don't recall there being anything in the way of family background for him in Dahl's book - my impression is that he was more of a sui generis figure there - but I could be wrong, and if all of that is Burton's fabrication, well, all the better). Charlie and his grandpa don't get to do that much except be exemplars of wide-eyed good-naturedness, but that's fine. The other children - and their parents - are suitably obnoxious, in a 'I want to see more of them' kind of way. And the oompa loompas are, well, pretty much beyond description and so about what you'd expect.
Incidentally, this film also made me go 'mmm' in a different sense, inasmuch as it reminded me of the gorgeousness of Helena Bonham Carter, but that's another story...
