Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Rating: PG
Directors: Sam Raimi
Quick Impressions:
The first forty minutes or so of this movie really failed to impress me. Quite honestly, I watched and thought in surprise, “Wow! Jack the Giant Slayer was actually a lot better.” James Franco definitely did not seem like someone from L. Frank Baum era Kansas. The beginning of the movie could be retitled James Franco Dresses Up in an Old Timey Costume and Walks in Front of a Green Screen. However, once Oz enters China Town, things begin to look up. Not only does the movie improve half-way through, but it eventually becomes so good that I watched the captivating ending with child-like wonder and excitement. My four-year-old fell asleep and missed the end, so I’m hoping we’ll get to take her back at some point. Hopefully, the beginning will seem at least tolerable on a second viewing because the ending is so satisfying and fun to watch that I’d like to own the movie. Honestly, the ending was so strong that it made me wonder if Disney is planning to remake The Wizard of Oz itself.
The Good:
The story is good, better than I expected actually. (I’m basing this on what unfolds onscreen. I haven’t read the screenplay.)
The first part is slow, but a real highlight is the presence of young actress Joey King. Apparently, she was also the beautiful child in the prison flashback scene in The Dark Knight Rises last summer. She gives a fantastic performance in this film. Before the cyclone blows through, she’s definitely the best part of the movie (by far. For some reason, James Franco seems to deliver a better performance when he’s acting opposite her.) Her character, Girl in Wheelchair/China Doll (literally different but metaphorically the same person), is one of the best in the movie. For her, Oz wants to be a hero, and for her he can be. When the China Doll was introduced, I realized, This script is a little better than I originally thought. (And it soon got even better to my surprise and pleasure.)
Throughout the film, Franco is consistently outshone by all his female co-stars. Mila Kunis is stunning. (When she first showed up, in fact, I was thinking that I would like the movie better if it were called Mila Kunis and the Big Butterfly Tree. I would have watched that movie all day. And I would have come back for the sequel, Mila Kunis Wears a Hat.)
Rachel Weisz is also stunning, and she brings a much lacking-to-that-point gravity to the film. Not only is Weisz gorgeous, but she’s a gifted actress, and she also gets to wear the most elegant yet Oz appropriate costume. She doesn’t actually get that much screentime, which is a pity.
Michelle Williams is absolutely phenomenal. I remember that (though I liked her performance in My Week with Marilyn) I found her star power somewhat lacking compared to the real Marilyn Monroe. Well, compared to the rest of the cast in this film, Williams is the greatest and most charismatic actress of all time. Her performance is of a much higher caliber than the others. Only Rachel Weisz seems to be playing on her level, but Weisz is given an underwritten character who seems to exist mainly to mislead the audience. Glinda is a character who can be atrociously annoying if played (or written) wrong. Williams brings genuine subtlety and strength to the performance, offering us a Glinda who understands showmanship just as much as any Kansas circus man. Little girls should rejoice. Rarely do we get a strong, powerful, courageous, beautiful, clever heroine like this. Listening to her deliver a rousing speech, I thought that Williams’s own daughter will probably love the film. (Also, Michelle Williams is the only person in the black-and-white portion of the film who even seems to be trying to make us believe she lives in Kansas around the turn of the twentieth century.)
Also, I’m not sure who is in charge of lighting these women, but that person deserves all the gold coins in that Emerald City treasure vault. There is no such thing as bad lighting in this movie. The cinematographer seems obsessed with creating striking images of gorgeous women. Every shot of every leading lady looks like it could double as a still in a high end fashion magazine. There’s this one moment when Michelle Williams gets knocked backwards, and I thought, “Oh no! She fell out of her marvelous lighting. She looks disheveled and vaguely odd.” But a split second later, we cut to a lusciously lit, perfectly framed shot of her, lying down, staring up defiantly like she’s on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.
Visually, the movie is always stunning. Even in 2D, Oz is gorgeous and imaginative. My husband noted afterward that some scenes reminded him of Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland. All three of us particularly liked the scene in the dark forest. The only complaint I have is that when the wizard first gets to Oz, it doesn’t look much like he’s really there. The world behind him is lush, imaginative, and gorgeous—but that’s just it. You can tell it’s behind him and not surrounding him.
I also love the choice to begin in black and white (with a period aspect ratio to match). It’s an obvious nod to the 1939 classic, but I think it could also be something more. I would love to see black and white reemerge as a legitimate choice for popular cinema. (Horror and noir are often better that way.) My own children prefer not to watch black-and-white, which bugs me since I grew up watching classic movies and old television shows. If nobody makes an effort to reintroduce black and white, to make it palatable to today’s kids, it’s going to disappear. If anybody knows how to influence (or brainwash) kids, it’s Disney. They just gave us Frankenweenie, now this, two 3D feature films that incorporate black and white. That’s cool, I think.
In terms of plot and pacing, the film definitely gets off to a slow start, mainly because the stuff happening at the beginning fails to sell us on the concept. But it gets better. There are only so many stars in the cast, and we already know about the world of Oz, so discovering the villain is not a great mind bender. But the movie does give us something better than I originally feared. At one point, my daughter cried triumphantly—and loudly—“I knew it! I knew she was the Wicked Witch!” Yes, everyone knew that. You could guess that from reading the names in the opening credits. Watching an early scene in Oz, I thought, If this movie were good, it would do something I don’t think it’s going to. Let me just say, the movie exceeded my expectations. What could be viewed as simply a weird, inadequate performance suddenly becomes the (comparatively) well laid groundwork for a less stupid than I initially feared plot.
And the ending of the movie is just really, really awesome. What I mean is, I simply enjoyed it. Sometimes Oz spinoffs spin pretty far off. (I guess that’s natural for a series made possible by tornadoes.) The climactic moments of this movie take us back to the 1939 classic, and I think what they do really, really works. (It helps, too, that James Franco himself is physically absent for a lot of this stuff.)
Zach Braff and Bill Cobbs are quite good in supporting roles, though Cobbs needs more to do, I think. Tony Cox also has some great moments as Knuck, though I honestly think the character needs a little more development. (It comes across on screen as though the actor is doing more for the character than the script.) Bruce Campbell is basically wasted as the Winkie Gate Keeper.
Best Scene:
Without a doubt, the best scene is the one in which Oscar actually embraces his destiny and dramatically transforms into the Wizard of Oz. (This is also a pretty long scene involving all kinds of other stuff. But it’s all very exciting. Sadly, my daughter had fallen asleep and missed it.)
Best Scene Visually:
My four-year-old daughter loved the style of the opening credits. She actually took the trouble of remarking on it at the time (and noting that the filmmakers were “really doing their best job.”) So apparently their attention to detail paid off with the four-year-old girl demographic.
I’ve already praised the use of black and white, and everything looks marvelous (though fake) once Franco gets to Oz. (Well, no, actually, Oz looks real, and Franco looks fake.) That butterfly tree melted my heart. I also liked Mila Kunis’s red hat. It looks particularly good on Mila Kunis. It’s also adaptable to the occasion, which is a nice touch.
The scenes in the Emerald City reminded me of the scenes in Coruscant in the Star Wars Prequels, which probably means that all parties involved were borrowing from earlier cinema. But the look of Coruscant is one of the few things I whole-heartedly liked about the prequels, so I also enjoyed the Emerald City.
If I have to pick just one scene, I’ll name the part in the dark forest (with the eyes following them) because that highly appealed to all three of us.
Funniest Scene:
People (including me) laughed an awful lot when Knuck opened the door, and I actually found that kind of disturbing. That character in particular kind of bugged me. I’d vacillate between thinking, “He seems randomly thrown in for diversity’s sake, but they’re not using him well,” and “Actually, he is funny, and the audience likes him, especially the kids.” As a plot device, he’s very useful, but I wish the character had gotten more development. When you consider the short shrift given to the actors playing the original 1939 Munchkins, Knuck is a huge improvement, but still…I don’t know….
The actor, Tony Cox, was in Willow and more recently Bad Santa, and really all kinds of stuff. My point is, I think he’s capable of doing more than they let him. That’s a problem with almost every character, though, not just Knuck. Except for Oz, Glinda, the doll, and the monkey, all the characters need more development.
This movie really is not a comedy. There are plenty of light-hearted moments—as the monkey, Zach Braff has several genuinely funny lines and my daughter enjoyed the river fairies. But the drama is bigger than the jokes are funny. And that’s not a bad thing.
Best Action Sequence:
Who doesn’t love a full scene of unbridled witch-on-witch action? That actually sounds much more lurid than I intended. What I’m trying to say is that this movie has a fantastic scene that’s basically the equivalent of the wizards’ duel between Gandalf and Saruman in The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s pretty great. (But sadly, my daughter missed that, too.)
The Negatives:
Maybe the problem is just that I don’t like James Franco. (It’s probably not a coincidence that during all of my favorite moments, Franco either wasn’t speaking or flat out wasn’t there.) Part of the reason the beginning didn’t work for me may be that I don’t particularly like Franco. Of course, most of the reason I don’t like Franco is that I don’t think he’s a very good actor. (I’m aware that he’s been nominated for Best Actor, but that doesn’t change the fact that ordinarily I find his performances lacking. He just seems very two-dimensional to me.) And while we’re on the subject, I also find his personality off-putting. But I take no issue with his grooming or diction. He was fine in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but that’s because Andy Serkis carried that movie and John Lithgow helped. (Now Dave Franco, on the other hand—I’d watch him in anything. So far Dave’s performances have been one note, but he consistently hits that note. To me, the elder Franco always seems kind of flat.)
My husband had the same feeling about Franco. Perhaps he was miscast. On the ride home, we asked ourselves who would have made a better Oz and immediately came up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He has exactly the same smile as Franco, but there’s more to him than that. I thought Franco played the “huckster” moments well, but didn’t do so well when Oz wasn’t pretending to be great and powerful. There was just something about the performance that rubbed me the wrong way. My husband’s next choice was Robert Downey Jr., and when he suggested that, a bell went off, and I remembered Downey was actually originally cast in the project and had to drop out because of a scheduling conflict. Yeah, he would have been a much better choice.
(Some of our runner-up better choices were Brad Pitt ten years ago, Heath Ledger six years ago, Matthew McConaughey with accommodating location adjustments, and Justin Timberlake, yes we’re serious. In honesty, I must admit that Timberlake might not have been any better with the dramatic moments, but I like him much better.)
Anyway, Franco’s performance just doesn’t work as well as it needs to. He’s good when Oz is “performing,” but when the character is just being himself, Franco’s performance seems off somehow. I realize that the character is conflicted and confused about his own identity, but the performance still feels inadequate or something, just weird. And it doesn’t help that with so many glamorous co-stars to choose from, the one Franco has the best chemistry with is the little girl. (I don’t mean that he seems to be in love with her, just that he does his best acting opposite her and seems most natural in those scenes.) He also has decent chemistry with Zach Braff in monkey form, but most of the women overpower Franco, and his scenes with Mila Kunis just feel a little kooky.
The beginning of the movie is too slow (though it may just feel slow because it’s bad). Nobody is acting like they’re in turn of the twentieth century Kansas (except possibly Michelle Williams, but Michelle Williams is trying just hard enough to let us know that they should probably all be trying).
And even though by the middle, the film picks up to have a very satisfying and engaging final act, so many of the characters remain underdeveloped. Evanora is the most flagrantly underdeveloped and underutilized character, but there’s also the problem of Knuck and the Master Tinker. They show up really, really, really late, but then at the end, it’s like they were all part of the gang from the beginning just as much as the others. The actors are great, but they’re not given enough to do, and what they are given doesn’t do the characters justice. Even Mila Kunis’s character could use a little more development. Hopefully, there will be a sequel.
When I asked my daughter which of the two movies she saw recently she preferred, she answered Jack the Giant Slayer (because of the use of the last bean). She might answer differently once she stays awake for the end of this movie, though, because that’s the best part by far (and she loves to see scary villains get their comeuppance). In my personal opinion, Jack begins better and is more consistent. The characters in that film behave as if they belong in the time and place where we find them right from the start. However, this movie finishes better (much better). Jack leaves you with a “meh” feeling. Oz the Great and Powerful makes you want to cheer, applaud, buy some ruby slippers, take up storm chasing, and cyberstalk all living descendants of Judy Garland. (Or, to be more honest, it makes you want to write gushing, excessive sentences like that!)
Overall:
At first, I found Oz the Great and Powerful only tolerable, but a little less than halfway through, the movie dramatically improves. The ending is wonderful (as any tale of the Wizard of Oz ought to be), and because the last act is so captivating, I plan to buy the film on blu-ray. It’s stunning visually, and all the children in the audience seemed to respond well (and vocally). If I can, I’ll probably see this again in the theater, and hopefully next time, my daughter won’t sleep through the ending.