Unreal Movie Review: Oz the Great and Powerful
Despite Hollywood wanting to reboot anything and everything you’ve ever heard of, certain cinema classics have so far appeared to be off limits. We have no Godfather Part IV. There is no Citizen Kane: Revenge of Rosebud. We haven’t yet recast Casablanca with Justin Timberlake and Katherine Heigl.
But one of the mighty has now fallen: Oz.
The Wizard of Oz is one of the most iconic films of all time, and due to the fantastical setting , it was only a matter of time before someone devoured it with CGI and released some variant of the world as a blockbuster. We did not get a full-on remake of the original, but here with Oz the Great and Powerful, we have another popular choice: the prequel.
As odd a group as the original, I suppose.
James Franco is Oz himself, a carnival magician with more charm than sense, and absolutely no magical talent whatsoever resorting to cheap tricks and theatrics to fool his audience. After a particularly awful show, his day goes from bad to worse when his hot air balloon is swept up by one of those damnable Kansas tornados. Just like eighty years ago, the air goes still and the world changes from black and white to color. But in this case, from real life to CGI.
Like the film it’s trying to emulate, Alice in Wonderland, the land of Oz is almost an entirely CGI creation, and with its bright colors and whimsical plants and wildlife, it almost feels like a Dreamworks film that happens to star real people. It can be quite pretty, but unlike James Cameron’s Avatar where the lush jungles took a decade to render, this looks decidedly more hurried. It’s not bad, and the 3D isn’t eye-gouging like in Wonderland, but you often can’t shake the feeling you’re watching a movie filmed inside a very green warehouse.
After Oz lands, he meets Theodora (Mila Kunis) a pretty young witch with a devious sister, Evanora (Rachel Weiz). They task him with destroying the “evil” witch, Glinda (Michelle Williams), but as most of us have seen the sequel already, we know that something is amiss here.
Why would a bad witch be blonde? Ridiculous!
Glinda of course tells Oz he’s been fooled, and he in turn confides to her that he’s not one of those actual “magical” wizards. In other words, he’s a complete fraud. But that doesn’t matter as the two sisters rain down fire and brimstone and flying monkeys on the residents of Oz. Evanora does it because she’s just mean, and while Theodora is motivated by her broken heart which Oz shattered by running off with Glinda (who happens to look exactly like his long lost love back in Kansas).
Watching the film, it’s hard not to picture Robert Downey Jr. in the central role, which was originally who was cast in the film. But Downey left, and we’re given Franco instead. He does a decent job given the material, but there’s something distinctively goofy about his portrayal of the wizard that makes the entire film feel like a very high budget Disney Channel original show. Of course, not everything has to be an uber-gritty reboot like the super serious Snow White in the Hunstman, but it might be good to remember you are walking into a PG-rated film here so you won’t be caught off guard by the level of discourse.
The real acting issues crop up when the two main women start trying to do impressions of their characters from the original. Glinda the Good is part Williams’ Marilyn Monroe, part stoned Barbie doll, while Mila Kunis’s attempt at acting “wicked” is a lot more goofy than it is scary, and her eventual odd-looking facial prosthetics don’t help matters either. Their love triangle with Oz is impossibly thin, though I suppose that means it matches the characters it contains.
Oz is a fun film, with a halfway decent story molded from the universe, and you’ll find pleasant surprises like a flying monkey voiced by Zach Braff who could have been annoying, but is actually quite funny. I particularly liked the climax of the film that allowed Oz to use his non-magical skills to take on the very magical evil witches, and it ties into the events of the original film quite well. They do leave some stones unturned however, and with no mention of tin men or ruby slippers, there’s plenty left for a sequel which will inevitably arrive. Then it’s probably only a matter of time for that full-on Wizard of Oz remake. Natalie Portman as Dorothy, anyone?
3 out of 5 stars
I disagree with you on this movie being fun. I experienced only two chuckles and they were both from the monkey. I found this movie to be quite dull. It’s not often that I’m watching a movie where I keep looking at the clock hoping for it to end already.
Certainly not a ‘good’ film. Franco is passable but feels like the second choice to play the character, which he was. Kunis is just not a good actor if she’s not playing “the bitch” like on That 70’s Show and she isn’t up to par with Rachel Weis, whom she shares a large amount of her screen time with. The CGI is downright awful in the beginning but is thankfully used less as the film progresses and there are some decent set pieces. The black-and-white scenes in the beginning are good looking but the use of a 1:1 aspect ratio for these scenes is pointless and off-putting. There are some laughs to be had from Tony Cox and Franco but it’s probably more of a kids movie which makes all the romantic stuff a little odd. In the end, it’s just an homage to the MGM film.
I keep being curious about this, but it’s gotten entirely mixed reviews and I’m having a hard time getting up the interest. Might be a renter or something down the road unless I just get really hard up for entertainment.
Have you seen Tin Man? It’s a little uneven, but a surprisingly effective reworking of the story that trades cannily on people’s familiarity with the original film. I wound up liking it a pretty good amount by the end of everything.
S’okay. Zach Braff wasn’t believable as the monkey. Mila was good for the first 30 minutes then fell flat real quick. Too many ‘well its like the old one, so it is, don’t ask questions’ moments. It felt good in moments but some of the acting fell flat except the china girl.
How do you be believable as a flying monkey?
Tin Man is better than this movie
So the wizard sets out to kill the evil witch because the good witch asked. When he finds said witch she is draped in a black cape and gliding through some creppy looking fog and she is trying to get into an also creepy looking grave yard set in a extremely creepy forest. She says “I’am not the evil witch. my sisters are’. Who do you believe? The blonde one, of course, only evil witches have dark hair, all good witches have blonde hair. “OK” says the wizard “I will just take your word for it and trust you completely, I’am obviously not caught in the middle of a murderous family feud here”
Rant over