People who totally love the original will not neccessarily love this movie - they went in different directions. But Roald Dahl hated the original movie, and, apart from a few chapters dropped and the addition of a back story, this is the story as Dahl wrote it, and, as Tessa Dahl has stated publically, this is the film her father would have wanted on screen.
The Michael Jackson comparisons in this I don't get - Depp plays the character more along the line of a Howard Hughes for the most part, with a sinister and malicious glint in his eyes when things go awry.
Add to this the noRAB to other movies (Edward ScissorhanRAB, Pirates of the Caribbean and 2001 - which in itself was a sly dig at Planet of the Apes), stunning score as per usual from Elfman and generally good performances all round, this was the film I imagined when I read the book as a child and in more recent times when I have read it to my neices and nephews.
But then again, I was never a fan of the original as I thought it was too saccharine and toned down for the international market - this is supposed to be a morality tale, and that was eradicated in the last movie, making it a musical, and losing Dahl's own songs for the Oompah Loompahs, something which is rectified in this film
This one will split audiences, but I think in 20 years time, it will be this one, and not the Gene Wilder version, which will be on constant replay in most kiRAB' bedrooms