What Parents Should Know
Parents should know that the movie -- like the book -- includes some intense scenes. Obnoxious children are ridiculed visually and in words by the Oompah Loompahs and dispatched. One girl blows up into a giant blueberry, another boy is sucked into a tube, the other girl is attacked and pinned down by squirrels who proceed to throw her down a garbage chute. In one early scene, dolls burn up and their eyeballs pop out. The movie is much closer in dark tone to the book than its cinematic predecessor. Willy Wonka himself seems to disdain families.

Families who see this movie can discuss Willy's difficulties with his dentist father. How does his fear of his father's disapproval lead him to rebel? How does Charlie's good relationship with his parents and grandparents allow him to feel self-confident, trusting, and generous? How does the film compare Charlie (as the good child) with bad children (rich, spoiled, greedy, materialistic)? How does the movie show that selfish, silly parents produce selfish, silly children?

Common Sense Media Review
Tim Burton's movie is mostly perky, slightly edgy, and awkwardly episodic. Kids will like the bright colors, spirited craziness, and physical comedy in CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and many parents will appreciate the film's celebration of supportive family structures. This begins with the introduction of young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore). Like all members of his family, including his cabbage-chopping mother (Helena Bonham Carter) and toothpaste-top-screwing father (Noah Taylor), he is very poor, very pasty, and very loving. Their teeny, tilting shack is located in the shadow of a gigantic candy factory, owned by the famously reclusive chocolatier Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp). Charlie wins a chance to tour the factory, with four other children, when he purchases a chocolate bar that has a "golden ticket" inside.

Following a creepy Small World-style performance that ends in the dolls melting down, the group of children and guardians enters the factory, where they will see the top-secret, magical processes by which Willy Wonka makes his delicious candy. Specifically, they see the Oompa Loompas (all played by a digitally multiplied and reduced Deep Roy) make the candy and mete out judgments against misbehaving children. Each child-parent set reveals its dysfunction: greedy Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) and his mother (Franziska Troegner), snooty Violet (Annasophia Robb) and her mother (Missi Pyle), spoiled Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) and her father (James Fox), and conceited Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) and his dad (Adam Godley) all make Charlie and his Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) look emotionally open and morally sound by comparison. Portrayed in broad, cartoonish strokes, the kids' cruelties serve as comedy, though they're not always funny.

Indeed, the non-Charlie children are so loathsome that their various "punishments" seem deserved. These are staged as song-and-dance numbers by the Oompa Loompas, modeled after scenes that some parents will recall from other venues, for instance, Esther Williams musicals, the Who's guitar-smashing rock shows, Hair, Psycho, 2001, The Fly, and even Burton and Depp's Edward Scisssorhands, in Willy's flashbacks to his troubled relationship with his dentist father (Christopher Lee). There are some current day references, some of which fail miserably (the Oprah appearance comes to mind), while others are merely annoying and serve to break the film's dreamlike power.

The film's strangeness is often fun, in particular Depp's white-faced makeup, frisky line readings (check his explanation: "Everything in this room is eatable; even I'm eatable, but that's is called cannibalism, and frowned on in most societies"), and weird affect. But the narrative rhythms are uneven, and Charlie, especially, is undeveloped, more an emblem of goodness than a full-on character. While the novel maintains a more or less steady focus through Charlie's perspective of all these crazy goings-on, the film is less coherent. It skips about to cover multiple storylines, including Willy's memories and the four bad children's separate exploits, all eventually pulled together by Charlie's good-boy summary of what matters most, his cozy family.

Families who enjoy this movie might also like the original movie version, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), Burton's other fantasies (including Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas), or Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

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