Chocolate fantasy

We've just come back from a family trip to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", which, on the whole, we really enjoyed. I had a little trouble with the first few minutes, when the actors were all British but using American vocab, and the traffic outside the factory drove alternately on the right and left in different scenes, and they used American money but lived in an English-style industrial area. But then I thought that if it was that ambiguous, it was probably deliberate - and found, later,on the website, that it was. The casting was very good - I liked Christopher Lee as a stern dentist, and all the children were exactly right. All the Oompa-Loompas were played by one actor, and the special effects both with him and other scenes were really good. I was impressed by Johnny Depp, who was nothing like he was in "Pirates of the Caribbean", in which I really fancied him (I've always been a sucker for ruffled shirts, boots and long hair in men, not that I married anyone at all like that), other than the same vaguely androgynous body movements, but was just weird enough for the part, without being over the top. Older daughter liked him too, and we had a short skirmish in which she was excited to discover he's 1/4 Cherokee (she's very into Native Americans, and we've just visited the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina), and I tried to counter with the information that he was born in 1963 and therefore is two years older than me, and much more suitable eye candy for me than her, therefore.
"No offence," she says, "but he looks much better for his age than you do, really."
"Yes," I answer, through gritted teeth, "but he's a film star and I'M NOT WEARING ANY MAKEUP."
However. All in all, we thought it was a great family film and pretty true to the book, overall. I give it 4/5.
And if they ever dramatise any Anita Blake books, I can just see Johnny Depp in some of those bedroom scenes. He'd make a lovely vampire.