This animated (clay-mated?) film stars Wallace and his loyal dog Gromit, who as a team form Anti-Pesto Humane Pest Control, dedicated to keeping the vegetables safe from those who would eat them prior to the giant vegetable-growing contest, held annually on the gounds of Tottington Estate.

In practice, this means that they catch rabbits before they have a chance to eat people’s vegetables, but they don’t kill the rabbits. Instead, they keep them in pens beneath their house. That generally is okay, but now something has changed.

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Right from the beginning, you can tell that this is different from the 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, it’s actually more reminiscent of the 1989 version of Batman because of director Tim Burton’s influence. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Batman was a classic in its own right.

But this telling quickly diverges from the 1971 version while at times remaining faithful to that wonderful tale. If you’ve seen that one (and most of us have), you’ll recognize it just about everywhere. And while I’m a big fan of Johnny Depp, let’s face it – he’s no Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

Burton’s taste for the bizarre comes through in stellar fashion, and for the most part it works, but rather than Wilder’s childlike sense of wonder in the original, we get a bizarre psychosis here, and it where the original worked wonders, it just doesn’t work here at all.

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