Charlie and the Chocolate Factory gives chocoholics, especially those with a taste for bittersweet varieties, something to stand up and cheer for. The loopy, maniacal charms of Roald Dahl's 1964 book are splendidly captured by director Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp and composer Danny Elfman helping flesh out confectioner Willy Wonka's personal history with subversive sarcasm and gleeful showmanship. And hats off to Deep Roy for his computer-enhanced portrayal of every last Oompa-Loompa.

Burton and company mine elements of the book and the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with a quirky faithfulness that assiduously avoids reverence. It's a dark homage, toward which those with a special kind of sweet tooth will be more favorably disposed.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory bypasses the lyrical wistfulness that came at the end of the 1971 film and at the conclusion of Burton's last effort, Big Fish, when the fantasist hero reunites with all the figures from his life. Fortunately he doesn't get lost in the narrative thicket as he did in that scattered effort. Charlie ends with a nod and a wink, and the tangents are the best parts -- flights of bizarre fancy that contribute to a greater whole.

We're taken to India where Wonka builds a palace of chocolate for a prince and on the expedition when he meets and recruits the cocoa-worshipping Oompa-Loompas. The staging of Danny Elfman's songs is deliriously kitschy, with references to Esther Williams swim numbers and videos of hard rock anthems. There's even a visual tip to Burton and Depp's first collaboration, Edward Scissorhands.

The real nougaty surprise is Wonka's back story, told in flashbacks and comprising a foil to young Charlie's impoverished but loving upbringing in the shadow of the factory. A pained, faraway look comes over Willy's pale face and we cut to episodes in his childhood as the son of a stern dentist (Christopher Lee) who forbade eating candy. The mystery at the heart of Wonka is explained by a tacit acknowledgment that the artistic drive often stems from an unhappy childhood; torment and deprivation are the sources of creativity.

Depp's genuinely daring performance, which gives new meaning to the word fey, captures the anarchy of the practical aesthete who doesn't shun making money. With his Prince Valiant haircut, flat accent, and eccentric attire, he's a combination of Mr. Rogers, the Church Lady, and Michael Jackson. His Wonka is more temperamental fashion designer than melancholy hippie a la Gene Wilder. Despite a mild Scrooge-like conversion, he's not much of a people person. So traumatized was he by his early experiences, he can't even utter the words "parents" or "family".

The delightfully zany core of the story remains. Five children -- gluttonous Augustus Gloop, competitive gum-chewer Violet Beauregarde, nasty tech wiz Mike Teavee, spoiled brat Veruca Salt, and kind-hearted Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) -- find the golden tickets that entitle them to a tour of the cocoa Mecca with one adult escort.

As expected in a Burton film, the production design is marvelous. There are stark images that evoke dehumanizing industrial labor conditions and assembly-line mechanization, plus deco touches and day-glo colors that mark frivolous consumption and mindless enjoyment.

Dahl's humorous and politically incorrect use of cultural stereotypes is preserved, while critiques of greed and capitalism are upended; it's a socialist fable on the one hand, and a celebration of choice and individualism on the other. And sly, modestly cruel jokes and puns (a cow being whipped to produce whipped cream) abound. You'll never look at a squirrel the same way again after watching the nut-sorting room scene when Veruca and her dad (the venerable James Fox) are attacked.

The term "weird" is used by multiple characters, including Wonka, and because the weirdness is never shed altogether, this musical fantasy rings true. Willy Wonka is peculiar by any definition. But making life more delicious for others is a noble aim and it's fun being reminded one needn't be sickly sweet to achieve it. 

(Released by Warner Bros. and rated "PG" for quirky situations, action and mild language.)