Depp brings a nutty center to Willy Wonka adventure

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Comic fantasy. Starring Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore. Directed by Tim Burton. (PG. 120 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

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In "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," director Tim Burton does his best work in years. The story provides endless opportunities for him to let loose his visual imagination, and his caustic humor finds outlet in the baroque mishaps that befall various deserving characters and in the personality of

Willy Wonka

, presented here as a man with a screw loose.

It says something about Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy that, for all the movie's visual extravagance, audiences will walk out talking about Depp. This time, Depp doesn't rely on quirky mannerisms but creates and inhabits a complete character, an eccentric whose serene facade is a veneer over an inner life of jangled nerves, resentment and childhood wounds. Willy is remarkably self-controlled. He rarely says what he's thinking, but the audience can read his thoughts -- and his struggle to stay polite, as well as the frequent discord between his thoughts and his demeanor, becomes extremely funny. It becomes funnier, in fact, as the movie goes on.

Based on the children's book by Roald Dahl of the same name, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is about a boy (Freddie Highmore) from a poor but loving family, who lives in the town where Willy Wonka has his world-famous factory. Charlie's family is so poor that they eat cabbage soup every night, and only once a year does Charlie get a chocolate bar, on his birthday. A leisurely opening, related by Charlie's grandfather, tells us of the history of the Wonka factory, from its beginnings to the fateful day when Willy fired his workers and closed his gates to the public. Since then, the factory has kept operating, through automation and other mysterious means.

Charlie dreams of one day being able to go inside the factory, and his hopes are raised when Willy announces, through a written statement, that he will allow five children, accompanied by their parents, to visit the chocolate factory for a daylong tour. The odds of winning an invitation are remote -- golden invitations have been inserted inside five randomly selected candy bars -- and Charlie watches sadly as four children, each horrible in his or her own way, find a ticket. But, of course, Charlie ultimately finds one, too, and, on the appointed day, he and his grandfather are there with the four other kids and their parents, standing outside the gate of the Wonka factory.

Until the entrance of Willy Wonka, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" seems as if it's going to be just a well-made children's story, with exceptional art direction and a few flashes of knowing irreverence there to keep adults from slipping into a coma. But once those gates open, it becomes a different movie. The children are welcomed by a musical production number, staged with automated puppets that accidentally burst into flames. And then Willy appears, in his Prince Valiant haircut and green gloves, looking almost as pale and acting almost as strangely as Michael Jackson.

Depp plays Willy as someone who has been out of social circulation for years. He lives in his own imagination, surrounded by a tiny race of workers known as the Oompa-Loompas, and so being around these kids -- especially the four brats -- is a strain. It also brings up memories of his own childhood, which the movie renders in comical flashbacks, in which Willy's father, a dentist, refuses to let him eat candy. The dentist father also explains why Willy has blindingly white, ridiculously perfect teeth.

Once the film gets inside the factory, it takes on a structural sameness. But it staves off monotony thanks to the clever script, Depp's consistently amusing performance and the startling and inventive scenes and sets. There's a chocolate waterfall, and Willie and his guests travel on a chocolate river on a red ship in the shape of a candy seahorse. In one room, a pink sheep is being sheared. That takes up maybe 15 seconds of the movie, but it's beautiful and stays in the mind. There's a wonderful scene of squirrels -- about a hundred of them -- sitting on white stools in a blue room, shelling walnuts to be used in Willy's chocolate bars. It's also worth mentioning that all of the Oompa-Loompas are played by the same actor (Deep Roy).

The brats are conveyed in broad strokes and played with gusto by the child actors. There's a German glutton (Philip Wiegratz), a spoiled rich girl (Julia Winter), a know-it-all (Jordan Fry) and a competitive sports monster (AnnaSophia Robb). Interestingly, in photographing these kids, everything is done to make their faces perfectly smooth, like computer animation characters. It has the nice effect of making them at once more beautiful and more inhuman.

If all the laughs come from Depp, who gives Willy the mannerisms of a classic Hollywood diva, the film's heart comes from Highmore, a gifted young performer who had a leading role in "Finding Neverland." His performance is sincere, deep and unforced in a way that's rare in a child actor.

-- Advisory: Bratty child behavior and mild mayhem.