CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY opens in the UK to brilliant reviews!

Tim Burton’s CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, opened in wide release in the UK today. The film has already earned $131.7 million in two weeks of release in the U.S. and Canada. Reviews were generally very good to outstanding. “[A] movie worth catching, mostly thanks to Depp who lights up the screen as the deliciously-dotty confectioner,” wrote THE MIRROR. “Springing from the twisted imagination of director Tim Burton, the result is as dark and sweet as the confectionery in question and one of those rare movies that’ll appeal to kids and adults alike.”

TIME OUT pronounces CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY “a charming children’s film that embraces imaginative production design and a wonderful creepy performance from Johnny Depp as the reclusive confectioner, Willy Wonka. It’s fitting that Burton, who rejects CGI in favour of real sets, should be at the helm of a story that was conceived by Roald Dahl in 1964 partly to lament the onset of modernity. [. . .]” As for Johnny Depp’s performance, TIME OUT writes, “Depp is the film’s piece de resistance. He carves a character defined by angular physical presence and alien diction. His Wonka is a strange hybrid: the costume of Michael Jackson; the lingo of Austin Powers; the hairstyle of Olivier’s Richard III; the top hat of a undertaker. It’s a sweet cocktail.”

“Cinema would be a much sweeter place if only a fraction of summer movies teased an audience as brilliantly as CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY,” writes James Christopher in the UK TIMES. “There isn’t a single conventional frame in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic bedtime story, yet the morals about spoilt children are as familiar as yon hills. […] But it is Depp’s marvellous Wonka who powers the film,” Christopher adds, calling the movie “pure shameless magic.”

The Zone thanks emma, Reemi, and Gilbert’s Girl for posting the reviews of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY on the News & Views forum.

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