You’re going to hear about how great Oz the Great and Powerful is in terms of visuals. The 100% CGI china doll character is, admittedly, phenomenal, but for the most part we are teleported into a CG wonderland that’s lovely to look at, but lacking in wonder. You don’t look at the Oz developed by the effects wizards employed by director Sam Raimi and awe at its majesty as much as you see it for all its artificiality and the 3-D does little to enhance this non-reality accompanied by a story that quickly progresses into boredom.
The only moment worthy of being singled out comes in the first few minutes. In fact, the moment I’m referring to is the first few minutes. The opening credit sequence is a fully animated, “paper” puppet sequence that rivals the lovely animated sequence during the closing credits of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (watch those here), without the fantastic score from Thomas Newman. It’s inventive, inviting, clever and wonderfully animated with brilliant, shadowy corners and hints of what’s to come.
Then, the movie starts.
Like 1939’s The Wizard of Oz before it, the opening scenes are shot and presented in a 1.33 aspect ratio, in black-and-white/sepia tones. In familiar fashion, we’re introduced to several characters that will soon become fantastical counterparts to the film’s main protagonist, Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a carnival wizard that goes by the stage name “Oz the Great and Powerful”.
The story systematically introduces us to characters such as his assistant (Zach Braff), whom he treats like dirt and refers to as a trained monkey and the love that got away (Michelle Williams) while he attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of his 1905 Kansas audience, trying to convince them he’s a real magician. His ruse hits a snag when he’s asked by a young paraplegic girl (Joey King) to help her walk again, but he makes his escape stage left before he must admit his limitations.
Shortly thereafter Oscar is chased by a jealous husband, upset to learn Oscar has slept with his wife, forcing him to escape in his hot air balloon that is eventually sucked into a tornado and it’s off to Oz we go where black-and-white turns to color and green screens turn into visual effects.
Upon arrival, Oz is a world filled with bright, digital foliage, snowy mountains in the distance and raging waterfalls. Oscar’s balloon lands and he quickly meets the first of the land’s three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis). Now I’m not going to go into her motivations as the film tries to play coy with Who is the good witch? and Who is the bad witch? to a fault, but suffice to say, an evil witch is apparently lording over Oz with her army of flying baboons and Oscar is seen as the man prophesied to save the day. The other two witches are played by Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams if it’s of any interest.
This witch thing also gets to part of the problem, just what exactly the so-called evil witch is doing to the people of Oz, preventing them from being “free” is unclear. Granted, the wicked witch does have her baboons arbitrarily destroy a china doll population upon hearing the news Oscar has arrived, but what she was doing to the people before his arrival is unclear. The people of Oz don’t necessarily look as if they are being oppressed, but perhaps I missed something.
As for Oscar, he’s clearly a selfish man and he’s going to learn a lesson, and he’ll do so even if by the end of the film it isn’t entirely clear he’s learned much at all. So be prepared to accept that. I will, however, concede he does learn two bickering sister witches and the one witch they banished can’t seem to solve anything without the help of a simple man from Kansas. Yeah, let the Seth MacFarlane haters chew on that one for a bit. The witches may have the magic, but in Oz, Oscar has the swagger.
The performances didn’t help the film either. Franco was the wrong choice for Oscar, only fitting the role in the final moments where he’s allowed to ham it up a bit, which seems to be Franco’s only reliable talent. Williams and Kunis appeared to have a hard time fitting into their roles; Williams seeming to attempt to channel Billie Burke‘s Glinda from the original, with ridged movements and stilted line-reading and Kunis just couldn’t reach the level of performance her character called for and her makeup didn’t help one bit. Weisz was the only one that seemed comfortable, and the only one I didn’t have any real issue with.
There is a caveat to everything I’ve said, however. For as much as you may want to compare this film to the original The Wizard of Oz, it’s important to note the filmmakers were restricted in how they could portray Oz and several elements within Oz the Great and Powerful. Disney does not own the rights to the original film, merely the rights to L. Frank Baum‘s stories. So, no, you won’t see any red slippers and you won’t be hearing any songs you may be familiar with from your childhood. Director Sam Raimi and screenwriters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire were working explicitly from Baum’s books and if it wasn’t in the books but made it into the ’39 version of Oz you won’t find it here.
This goes to the level of fairness in how I judged the film. I can’t entirely wash away all memory of the original Oz. However, pushing any comparisons aside I still found Oz the Great and Powerful incredibly dull and was immensely thankful the lengthy 130-minute run-time ended with what was a largely entertaining finale. Yet, it wasn’t worth the two hours it took to get there. No level of CG wizardry and 3-D environments can elevate a tedious story above mediocre and in this case even that’s a bar set too high.
