Film Studies: Johnny and Tim: maybe it's time to move on, boys

There's another lesson - which is that films for children have altered drastically since 1971, when Gene Wilder did his delightful, absent-minded yet faintly sinister turn as Willy Wonka. As one of my young companions put it, this Willy Wonka "didn't have enough good things to say". For this film is constructed around the mystery of Mr Wonka, the chocolate tycoon who for reasons never explained has first neglected his factory and then thought to bring it back to glory days. It may seem odd to criticise Roald Dahl for lack of malign intention, but the original novel (published in 1964) is very short on plot. Charlie Bucket is one of a group of children who go on a tour of the chocolate factory - and really, the book (and this film) are tours, and as bland, monotonous and unfocused as this sounds. Describe the overall career of Roald Dahl to anyone, give them the title - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - and they are going to expect more than a tour. The chocolate factory will turn into a very ambivalent place - apparently the answer to every child's prayer, yet really the source of dental trouble, family breakdown and even some great chocolate conspiracy.

It's the lack of narrative interest or thrust that is most odd about the film, and most likely to leave both the ingenuity of Burton's visual imagination and Depp's shady aplomb looking a little stranded. I realise that the book is a classic, and Felicity Dahl was one of the co-producers on this venture, surely determined to keep to the line of her father's book. But, in truth, too little happens in it for a movie. The children entering the factory need to be in a kind of moral danger. One idea would be two Willies: a charlatan Wonka has taken over and has a dark plan - so Charlie must rescue the real Willie. What prompted that idea was nothing less than the way Burton makes the factory exterior resemble Fritz Lang's great futuristic film, Metropolis, a story in which the saintly leader of the city workers is "cloned" as an evil seductress.

Tim Burton is 45 now, and his remarkable promise is beginning to look middle-aged. Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood are flights of unique fancy, bold stories with an uncanny visual world. More recently, Burton has done Mars Attacks!, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish and this. To put it mildly, there is no progress.

The case of Johnny Depp is just as intriguing. It seems to me that there is hardly any screen performer the public is more interested in now. His very clever, swish scene-stealing in Pirates of the Caribbean gave warning that Depp might be ready to dominate a big picture - and there are more Pirates coming in which (I worry) he will be over-burdened by being central. As Willy Wonka he is an androgynous dandy - very nattily dressed, very pretty, and faintly alarming. In a word, he is a gun poised to be fired - but the film can't pull the trigger. He needed, and seems ready for, a much larger challenge.

These problems are typical of contemporary American cinema, a place that has far more sense of discovering talent than really exercising it. Burton is the kind of artist who needs to be trusted. On the other hand, I have a hunch that there is a creative shyness in Depp: allow him to prowl around the edges of a film and he can be a delight; but put him dead centre and maybe he looks stunned, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory may have seemed like a "fun" project and a good payday. But talent sets its own standards. And I think the ultimate measure of both Burton and Depp may be creating a modern fairy story in which they frighten the life out of us. I know a couple of 10-year-olds who are ready for a good scare, and would take it any day over milk chocolate.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk

'Charlie & the Chocolate Factory' (PG) is out on Friday