The
Wizard of Oz is the first movie I remember watching
as a kid and since then I’ve watched it more times than I can count. So naturally, when I heard Disney was coming
out with Oz the Great and Powerful, it
gave me some mixed feelings. The Wizard of Oz has always been one of
those movies that I thought should be left alone because there is no possible
way that anything they put on the screen could possibly live up to what the
original had to offer. While Oz the Great and Powerful certainly has
something to offer to the audience, it still does not hold a candle to The Wizard of Oz (though to be fair,
very few movies are capable of that).
In 1905 Kansas, Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) is a
struggling magician with a small-time traveling circus. As a dangerous storm heads toward the fair,
Oscar is attacked by the circus strongman. Oscar makes his escape in a hot-air balloon
and, like Dorothy, gets swept away by a tornado into magical world of Oz. Here Raimi pays one of many homages to the
beloved classic by opening the picture in black-and-white and Academy-ratio
before we are taken to the bright and colorful (and widescreen) land of Oz. Once Oscar lands in Oz, he meets the young and
naïve witch Theodora (Mila Kunis), who believes him to be the prophesized
wizard (why does every single fantasy movie have to have some ridiculous
prophecy?) that will overthrow the Wicked Witch, bring peace the land, and
become the new king of Oz. Enjoying the
prospect of the riches and power that come with being the King of Oz, Oscar decides
to play along and in the meantime strikes up a flirtation with the
impressionable Theodora. Before he can
claim his throne however, he is informed by Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel
Weisz) that he must first journey into a dark forest (another fantasy movie cliché)
to kill the Wicked Witch. During his
journey he meets a talking flying monkey Finley (Zach Braff) who is mostly
useless, a little girl made of china (Joey King) who is also useless, and
Glinda the Good Witch (Michelle Williams) who despite having legitimate magic
powers mostly relies on Oscar to do her dirty for her.
Naturally you might think it would be hard for Oscar to
keep up this charade of being an all-powerful wizard without actually possessing
any magical powers. Luckily for him,
however, most of the people of Oz appear to be complete nitwits. Only about a handful of citizens ever
question his so-called powers while the rest of the people become completely mesmerized
by his great powers of access to basic technology. Even the people that know he isn’t really a
wizard don’t really seem to care enough to do anything about it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though,
since the people were also dumb enough to believe that Evanora was the good
witch despite being so obviously evil that the only stereotype missing is a
mustache for her to twirl.
For
some time now, I’ve found the quality of the special effects in Raimi’s movies
to be rather inconsistent and sadly this one is no exception. At certain points the CGI gets so bad, I
actually found myself preferring the effects of the 1939 original. Raimi has made some beautiful images but I
didn’t always find them to be believable which is kind of disappointing given
the over $200 million price tag it took to make this.
It
would be easy to write this off as just another cash grab made by a greedy
movie studio but I don’t think that’s what happened here. While it’s not a great movie there are some
strokes of brilliance to be seen and I actually believe that some genuine
effort was made for this to be a good film.
James Franco gives a great performance as the slick, silver tonged
magician and Michelle Williams fills the role of Glinda perfectly. It’s clear that director Sam Raimi has great respect
for the source material but the end result still leaves a lot to be
desired.
Grade: C+
No comments:
Post a Comment