by MARK SLUTSKY

You gotta wonder what’s going on inside Tim Burton’s head these days. So soon after attempting to remake the beloved cult classic Planet of the Apes, and totally botching it, he’s at it again, tackling yet another great work from that era. It’s fair to say that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn’t so much a remake of Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as it is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book. At any rate, it sure looks a lot like the original film in some key scenes.

The point is that there’s no point in remaking a visually distinctive, much-adored film, especially if you’re not going to bring anything really new to the table. The few updates Burton does make are along the lines of making the film more palatable for the ratings board and, one would assume, more “family-friendly.”

If you’ve read the book or seen the earlier film, you know that the basic story is this—a poor kid named Charlie (Freddie Highmore) is one of only five children in the world to find a golden ticket in a chocolate bar wrapper and win a trip to Willy Wonka’s (Johnny Depp) mysterious, fantastical chocolate factory. While there, he experiences a multitude of psychedelic wonders and witnesses, one by one, his incorrigibly bratty fellow winners dispatched in gruesomely appropriate ways.

Like its predecessor, there are some songs—and in this version they’re terrible, tuneless and irritating. But where this rendering diverges crucially is adding a subplot about Wonka’s relationship with his dentist father (aptly portrayed by Christopher Lee). Ultimately, the film becomes about reconciliation and the power of family and all that stuff.

While Depp and Burton have always worked together beautifully (think Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood), here they’re both off their game. Depp does one of his classically idiosyncratic weirdo performances, yet it doesn’t really take hold the way it does in, say, Pirates of the Caribbean, where he was the best thing about the movie. He’s just kind of goofy and distant, and his Willy Wonka is especially poor in comparison to Gene Wilder’s brilliant, charmy, creepy interpretation.

As for Burton, while his signature eye for wildly stylized visuals is evident, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory does nothing to change the feeling that he’s been singularly uninspired for close to a decade now. Not to say that the film doesn’t have its moments—Charlie’s house, with four grandparents to a bed, is quite nicely designed, as is the grim, snowy city that houses the factory. There are a some nice visual flourishes inside the factory itself, but a lot of it relies too heavily on textureless CGI rendering, which isn’t done well enough to be satisfying, and leaves you wondering if remaking a movie as unique as the original ever could satisfy.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opens Friday, July 15

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