“Inexplicably, and at great risk to the integrity of the movie, the filmmakers have burdened him with a psychological back story pulled out of a folder in some studio filing cabinet. Why does Wonka spend his days confecting sweets? Why, in the movies these days, does anyone – artist, serial killer, superhero – do anything? An unhappy childhood, of course. I’ll grant that it was clever to make Wonka’s dad a mad, sugar-hating dentist (and to cast the unmatchably sinister Christopher Lee in the role), but to force a redemptive story of father-son reconciliation onto this story is worse than lazy; it is a betrayal of a book that the filmmakers seem otherwise to have not only understood, but also honored. Sentimentality about family relationships does not feature heavily in Dahl’s world. Matilda, for example, the title character of another Dahl book, was more than happy to give herself up for adoption.” (New York Times )