Oz: The Great and Powerful - Review

The only magic present in OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is the disappearance of its visual effects budget. $200 million is poofed away, leaving only behind shockingly bad green screening and CGI intergradation. Sure, there are a few instances where the computer effects are worthwhile, which I'll will get to later, but the delightful world of Oz is often displayed to look like a cheap Barbie video game for the Playstation 2. Who am I kidding, all of those Barbie games were cheap. However, the only thing faker than the backgrounds, often riddled with creatures and flowers that are more lively than anything in the foreground, is the lead actor.


James Franco plays the titled character, a carny magician in a D-list traveling circus circa 1905. After a particularly bad showing in front of Kansas yokels, he jettisons away in his half-owned hot air balloon to escape the very angry strongman who learns of his two-timing. Oz is flung into a terrible looking CG tornado, only to be then flung into a terrible looking CG Oz. After embarking in one of the many annoying 3D-approved set pieces, which always consist of things flying in your faces, he meets up with a good witch (or a bad witch?) in the form of a repressed Mila Kunis. She believes him to be the prophesied Wizard who will save the land and banish the evil Wicked Witch who plagues it and her army of flying baboons. Further intrigued by the private gold stockpile kept for the messiah of Oz, Oz journeys on to battle the deadly woman (or is she?).


Whether you are a adult or a child weened on the plethora of good and awful book-adapted CGI fests in the past decade, it is not hard to figure what's to happen in the plot. The script is so light and banal to ever take serious of or to enjoy. The twists are always easy to spot miles away on the yellow brick road, small gags are more in favor instead of better characterization, and the film just stops at the end to have a big battle, since everything from HARRY POTTER to the dumb GOLDEN COMPASS had one. Some reviewers have already started to defend the story largely due to their longstanding crush of the works of director Sam Raimi, whose ARMY OF DARKNESS this film closely resembles. That comparison further enhances the troubles placed upon the paper. For instance, let's compare the main characters: Ash in ARMY is tired of fighting his enemy, the Deadites, and is willing to snooker his medieval servants in order to return to his environment. Despite being snippy and a bit cold-hearted, he still has honor in his heart and willing to save lives. Now mind you, I learned and understood all of this in that film upon my first viewing of it and without ever seeing the first two EVIL DEAD films. Oz the man, on the other hand, is truly unlikable to root for, having no qualities or personal feelings that will cause us to sympathize with him. To make him worst, he's played by James Franco.


Though I favor James Franco as a actor, he here shows the worst of his talents. Miscast to a high degree, Franco relies on weird facial contortions to convey a Rorschach test of emotions (is that happy or nervous?). His line-reading is stiff and monotone as his body language. During one moment where he performs a Scrooge McDuck dive into his future fortune, Franco looks as if he won bingo at a senior center. When he isn't whining or belting out magician catchphrases like a grade-schooler, Franco courts the three witches of the picture (Kunis, her big sister Rachel Weisz, and the "evil" Michelle Williams) as if he deliberately wants to be called out before reaching first base. To be fair, Franco is not helped at all by Raimi's direction, which also is his worst displayed here since his first forays with the Hollywood machine. Except for some crowd and long shots that benefit the widescreen ratio, he constantly favors suffocating close-ups, which then transition into dutch angles or extreme zoom-ins to make up for the lack of mystique of the world. Of course, these close-ups are necessary in order to have more 3D splurt attacks. The sheer lowlight is a sequence where the main characters need to steal someone's magic wand and it is as anti-climatic as a calendar. Then, to make everything far worst, from the head-shaking editing to the questionable music stings, there is Danny Elfman with another forgettable musical score.


Thankfully, there were a few elements that saved the film, showing off some of the magic we were expecting to see from a so-called prequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ. Though Franco is a walking bust, he is alleviated by his two fun CG sidekicks, who have fascinating designs and details. Zach Braff plays a flying monkey named Finely, who doesn't love to fight but to overcompensate Oz's shortcomings as a hero. Indebted to him for saving his life, Finely often gets the bigger laughs and smiles due to his charm and wit. His cuteness factor is instead given solely to the little China Girl, voiced by Joey King, the sole survivor of a town that was made up of living porcelain dolls. Due to her naivety and perkiness, the character excels at being someone you want to protect, even though the animators had a hard time fitting her in people's hands. The other true highlight is all of the female actresses, who once again show why the Oz world is suited for women than men. As stated earlier, Mila Kunis is given the task to greatly repress her natural exotic beauty to play Theodora, only able to expunge the pain outward when the time comes. She does a very nice job and often sparkles with Rachel Weisz, who gets to vamp as big sister Evanora, a green-magic woman who likes to be two steps ahead of everyone and be more of kin with Snow White's Wicked Stepmother. However, the most surprising and truly great performance came from Michelle Williams. She works wonders as Glinda, able to overcome the expected strictness and forced upon niceness of the character and make her three dimensional. She believes that there is goodness in everyone and is willing to help them show it in public, even though they are still bit of a cad. In other words, she is a righteous yet kinda conniving political P.R. supervisor.


There are a lot of problems with the entire structure OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, including its inability to live up to the expectations of the L. Frank Baum books, THE WIZARD OF OZ, or being the first high-profile Oz film since the vastly underrated RETURN TO OZ. The movie does incorporate much fan service to the legendary 1939 film, from the changing of the film color, the multiple allusions to or the hybrids of the classic characters, and certainly the ending gift exchange. That will always be the prevailing problem with any Oz adaptations: overcoming the steep popularity of Judy Garland and her luscious ruby-red slippers and the inability to recapture the myth-making skills of a MGM cast and crew. Given that the public is still waiting on a film musical adaptation of WICKED, this struggle, along with the gross and boring use of fan fiction, will continue to ring from the Emerald City.



FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5