OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     For many people there is a certain film that they saw at a young age that gives them great nostalgia when they watch it.  For me one of my favorites is the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.  I have fond memories of watching this film over and over as a child.  This series has become one of many to be “re-imagined” and made into a new series of films.  Some of those previous being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, both directed by Tim Burton and movies that I am not very fond of.  This time around Sam Raimi, the director of The Evil Dead series and the Spider-Man trilogy, takes the reigns of Oz the Great and Powerful.

     Raimi’s film is a “prequel” to the original Oz movie.  The film just like the original starts off as black and white.  It is a nice set up to the story and a nice nod to the classic film.  There are many moments in the film that pay homage to The Wizard of Oz.  Sometimes this can be a problem.  The film cannot decide its tone, it cannot decide whether it is a film that is merely an expansion on the Oz universe or if it can be a story on its own.  Some of these are charming, but there are just too many of them that they distract from the film having a fully formed narrative.

     The performances of the film are about half and half, some good and some bad.   The lead James Franco, who I like in most of his work, gives a crazy performance that almost redeems itself and makes sense near the climax of the film, but is mostly awkward and hard to watch.  The good performances of the movie are given by two of the witches played by Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz.  The third witch played by Mila Kunis, who is maybe more crazy and worse than Franco which is a shame because she plays the great villain The Wicked Witch of the West.  The best acting in the film is by CGI characters, a monkey in a bell hop suit who is voiced by Zach Braff and a small girl made of China.

     A big part of the film is the visual effects.  Sometimes they are nice to look at, but for most of the film it was a real distraction.  There were moments of the film where you could say “Oh look! They’re in front of a green screen.”  Things did not look bad, but they just did not look real enough to for me to be captivated.

     This film is unoriginal, but still is better than other stuff being put out. The acting seems like there were some people only doing this for a paycheck and the special effects people are trying too hard to impress us.  The movie will not make my best of the year nor my worst.