Newsday: This is Burton in the winking mode and full-tilt visual extravagance of his three best movies: "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood." The youngest audience members will miss the layering of pop culture references upon which Willy has built his madhouse (as if time had stood still the moment he shut the gate on the outside world): Sgt. Pepper, the Bee Gees, "Ben-Hur," "THX 1138," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Busby Berkeley-style production numbers for the Oompa-Loompas (written by Burton die-hard Danny Elfman) that remind us how fascistic those synchronized routines could be.
Depp, who is to Tim Burton what James Stewart was to Alfred Hitchcock, misses the mark when the script requires him to shtick it up a la Jerry Lewis. But he puts his head on the block in ways most of his contemporaries wouldn't dare, and ultimately overrides the camp posturings of the flashback sequences (Joan Crawford, anyone?) to make us feel something for Willy's inner child.
Rolling Stone: The Michael Jackson pallor. The unnaturally white teeth. The smile stretched with insincerity. Johnny Depp's deliciously demented take on Willy Wonka, the candy man of Roald Dahl's book, demands to be seen. Director Tim Burton surrounds Depp with miraculous visuals of spun sugar and creeping menace. Their missionary lunacy is a treat for twisted children of all ages.
MSNBC: The new movie often feels less like a remake than a trip through Burtonland, where weird landscapes, Danny Elfman’s spry music and Johnny Depp’s whims threaten to turn the movie into a series of improvisations. Fortunately, there’s more of the classic Burton (“Beetlejuice,” “Ed Wood”) than the problematic Burton (“Big Fish,” “Planet of the Apes”) of recent years.
And the casting couldn’t be much better. Highmore, who was Peter Pan to Depp’s J.M. Barrie in “Finding Neverland,” has the requisite soul and spirit to play Charlie. Also making solid contributions are David Kelly as Charlie’s young-at-heart grandfather and James Fox as perhaps the most indulgent parent on the planet. Depp’s dark take on Wonka may not become as beloved as Wilder’s version, but his performance is the film’s chief source of welcome surprises.
Chicago Tribune: Tim Burton's scrumptious version of writer Roald Dahl's 1964 children's classic is almost everything you'd want it to be: a peach of a story delightfully imagined by Dahl and lushly realized by Burton. It's full of witty or awesome scenes, flights of fancy and characters either totally, lovably sweet or outrageously, humorously rotten.
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