Finally, there is a remake worth the effort. Tim Burton puts his own visual stamp on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, based on the Roald Dahl children's novel that was filmed in 1971 as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

The crux of the tale is that a reclusive chocolatier hides golden tickets in the wrappers of five candy bars. The winners get a tour inside his huge confectionary works. One winner will get an additional, unspecified prize.

There is a bit of moralizing in the story, as most of the kids who find the tickets are spoiled brats, each with an obvious unpalatable personality flaw. The exception is Charlie Bucket, played by Freddie Highmore, who had a similar role in Finding Neverland. Charlie is well-mannered and lives in a crowded, teetering house with his parents and grandparents. His hopes of obtaining a ticket are slim, since his family can't waste too much money on candy. It doesn't get his spirits down, though.

One winner's father, played by a very smug James Fox, buys chocolate by the truckload and has his factory workers search them. Another winner is an obese boy who eats chocolate all day.

The story lends itself to visual excess, which is what Burton does best. His depiction of the secretive candy factory, with rivers of chocolate and fields of colorful confections growing on trees, is full of saturated colors. It's a sharp change from the drab house that Charlie lives in. Different sections of the factory are in different visual styles, but all have a retro psychedelic feel.

The tour is conducted by Willy Wonka, played by Johnny Depp in another one of his eccentric performances. He claims that he modeled his character on American children's show hosts like Mr. Rogers, but there is something rather off-center as well. He seems to show more concern about the contamination to his chocolate river than the floundering child when one of his guests doesn't listen and falls in.

Parts of the remake are more faithful to the book than the 1971 film version. One notable restoration shows an ill-mannered child being attacked by trained squirrels in the nut-sorting room.

Wonka's factory workers are all very small people called Oompa Loompas. In early editions of the book, they come from a jungle where they eat ground-up grub worms but prefer cacao beans — the main ingredient in chocolate. In the 1971 film they were more like garden gnomes, as they are in revised printings of the book. Burton utilizes most of the earlier description. Using computer technology, all of the Oompa Loompas are played by Deep Roy, an African-born actor of Indian descent.