This wildly enjoyable Roald Dahl adaptation may well be Burton's best yet - in a perhaps unexpected but nevertheless very welcome return to form, it's several cuts above his recent so-so features like Big Fish, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes.
He finds Dahl's material an ideal outlet for his fanciful brand of sinister camp, marshalling eye-popping contributions from cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, production designer Alex McDowell and set decorator Peter Young, to name just three of the most obvious behind-the-scenes recognition-worthy personnel.

Though hardly an actor's showcase, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory features what's also arguably a career-best effort is Johnny Depp: putting his (inexplicably Oscar-nominated) turn in Finding Neverland firmly in the shade, he's a wonderfully sly delight here as the dandyish, psychologically-scarred, child-hating confectioner-genius Willy Wonka, who emerges from years as a recluse to invite five "lucky" children to tour his vast, weird chocolate factory. Among these is dirt-poor Charlie Bucket (Depp's precocious Neverland co-star Freddie Highmore) - accompanied his Grandpa Joe, a former Wonka employee played by Fawlty Towers survivor David Kelly.

The wizened, 75-year-old Dubliner Kelly brings some welcome flavours of Samuel Beckett to his early appearances sharing a bed with Charlie's three other grandparents - and he understandably makes the most of his late-in-the-day big Hollywood break. But he, Depp and Burton are repeatedly and emphatically upstaged by another British-based veteran, the 4ft4in Deep Roy who, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, plays every one of Wonka's 30-inch-tall 'Oompa Loompas.' He gets to strut his stuff in no less than four show-stoppingly dazzling musical production-numbers - including one spectacularly OTT eighties-disco affair that seems to hommage Daft Punk's choreographed-robots routine in the Around the World video.

Until now almost entirely confined to sinister, often unrecognisably grotesque cameo appearances in horror, sci-fi and comedy pictures (including Burton's Apes and Fish) Roy has landed the job of a lifetime here - or rather 165 of them. As Burton puts it, "he worked his arse off" (not "ass", mind you) and was rewarded with a reported $1m fee. Not bad - according to his own memoirs, Sean Astin received a measly $250,000 for the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy - until you work out that Roy's pay-packet works out at just over $6,000 per Oompa-Loompa.

Wonka's workforce have always been one of the story's trickiest aspects - whether in book form or on the big screen. In 1971, Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a major box-office bellyflop but has gradually become something of a perennial favourite - but even Willy Wonka's ardent fans can't stand the picture's Oompa Loompas: Danny Peary called them "dreadful concoctions", and their rendition of songs by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse does tend to stop the picture dead in its tracks.

Despite incorporating some subtle nods here and there to Stuart's version (which, though officially credited as having been written by Dahl, appalled the Welsh-born author) Burton and scripwriter John August adhere much more closely to the book's text - with results that should pull off the exceedingly rare feat of delighting children and adults in pretty much equal measure. That said, older viewers may find occasionally find themselves distracted by the Tooth-style Americanisms ("candy", "vacation", "store", "bandaid", "dollars") spoken by ostensibly English characters in what's otherwise a decidedly English-flavoured script.

But this minor issue is easily outweighed by the surfeit of flair, imagination and intelligence shown by Burton and August throughout the picture's breezy two hours. If nothing else, they deserve a Wonka bar each for - in their spoof recreation of a scene from 2001 : A Space Odyssey, with the black Monolith replaced by a slab of chocolate - treating the now wildly over-revered Stanley Kubrick with what feels unmistakeably, and refreshingly, like a blast of iconoclastic contempt.


Neil Young
25/26th July, 2005 : in memoriam Iain Hepplewhite - 24.7.1966-23.7.2005

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY : [8/10] : USA (US-UK) 2004 : Tim BURTON : 115 mins
seen at Odeon cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 25th July 2005 - press show