Annie/Glinda: Michelle Williams
Theodora: Mila Kunis
Evanora: Rachel Weisz
Frank/Finley: Zach Braff
Girl in Wheelchair/China
Girl: Joey King
Master Tinker: Bill Cobb
Knuck: Tony Cox
Walt Disney Pictures
presents a film directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Mitchell Kapner and David
Lindsay-Abaire. Based on the “Oz” series of novels by L. Frank Baum. Running
time: 130 min. Rated PG (for sequences of action and scary images, and brief
mild language).
I imagine that many an
average moviegoer often feels they’ve seen an entirely different movie than the
critics. Critics will frequently decry audience pleasers, complaining about
dramatic and directorial technicalities that matter little to someone just
going to the movies for a good time. Often critics allow their biases against
certain formats, such as 3D, to distract them from the movie at hand. Often
these critics will make good points about the storytelling that are lost on the
untrained eye. I remember when I was just a fan of movies and not a critic. It
was always disheartening to feel that the supposed “experts” looked too hard
into something from which I’d found great enjoyment. I imagine this must be the
case with the new movie “Oz the Great and Powerful”.
Now that I am a movie critic
on top of being a fan of movies, I often find myself on the other side of that
coin. With this movie, however, I do feel I saw a different movie than most
other critics, who were mostly underwhelmed by this new visitation of L. Frank
Baum’s fantasy world. I found the film to hold just as much magic as the Land
of Oz itself, and even a little bit more. While I understand that most people
will really just differ with the critics on the entertainment value of the
film, I find it hard to believe that so many critics dismissed the many
different layers of storytelling and cinematic homage contained within this
surprisingly well-conceived story. Surely I saw a different movie.
“Oz the Great and Powerful”
acts as a prequel to Baum’s first “Oz” novel, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, and
the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz”. Instead of telling of Dorothy’s adventures
in Oz, this film focuses on the Wizard and how he ended up in his position in
Oz. The story begins in 1905 Kansas at a traveling circus show. We meet Oscar
Diggs, known as Oz to most. He’s an illusionist who depends more on the con in
every aspect of his life than on honesty.
Like the 1939 movie, this
section of the film is presented in black & white and the 4:3 screen aspect
ratio that was the standard then.
It is also shot on a set rather than on location as most films are
today. Even the dialogue reflects the original film’s time period
stylistically. Only the 3D format differs from the original, which is a
stylistic mistake. The 3D and the smaller screen would be more effective if the
3D wasn’t introduced to the screen until Oz makes his journey through the
tornado and into the colorful CGI created world of Oz.
Once in the coincidentally
named Land of Oz, our huckster hero finds a world unlike any he’s seen, and
unlike anything the audience has even seen before. This Oz is much grander and more majestic than the one
originally witnessed in 1939. He meets the witch Theodora and her sister
Evanora, who claim his coming was foretold in a prophecy that said he would rid
the land of its scourge, The Wicked Witch, and take the throne of the Emerald
City. He sets out to kill the witch, never letting on that he is not in fact a
wizard. When he finds the witch, she is not what he expected. I will not tell
more of the plot.
Also in reflection of the
1939 film, many of the people Oz knows in Kansas have a counterpart in Oz. In
Oz, he saves a flying monkey named Finley, who sounds an awful lot like his
former magic show assistant Frank. During one of his shows in Kansas a
wheelchair bound girl asks Oz to make her walk again. In Oz, he saves a China
Girl—a girl made of China—by gluing her broken legs back on. And, his former
love, Annie—in her Dorothy style gingham dress—has a witch doppelganger in Oz.
Screenwriters Mitchell
Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire do an excellent job tying all the new elements
to the points in the original story. Annie is set to marry a man named Gale,
making her Dorothy’s mother. Oz, while spending most of his life conning those
around him, finds a fitting way to resolve the events that sets up every detail
we learn about him from Dorothy’s first adventure in Oz. One witch cries tears
that burn her skin, just like water would to a witch in Oz. Another is
diminished to the point where a house falling on her might spell her end. And,
the munchkins even try to fit in a song before the less than sentimental Oz
shuts them down.
The performances are just as
fitting to the Oz mythology as the story elements. James Franco handles the
a-typical hero of Oz with a heavy dose of lechery dabbed in just enough
sentimentality to peek his goodness underneath. Michelle Williams makes the
almost hokey role of Glinda work in this more severe portrait of Oz than the
original. Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz make for a believable pair of witch
sisters with one hiding her evil intentions and the other handling the
difficult transition of the betrayed becoming the dominant very well. Zach
Braff and Joey King turn in motion capture performances as Finley the Flying
Monkey and China Girl that threaten to steal the show without ever quite
running away with it.
Sam Raimi’s direction is the
show’s main point of wonder. Raimi utilizes the 3D format to full effect. Many
of the effects are done for the sake of effect, which might explain some
critics’ scorn; however, this is in the spirit of the novels and the original
film, which showed off its special effects for their own sake in its own time.
Much of the 3D effects are quite artistic in nature, depicting the magic and
the beauty of Oz on a more glorious scale.
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