Sarcasm? Puh-leeze!: Movie Review: Oz The Great And Powerful

I don't know how I can still manage to churn out the words needed for this review, after a harrowing 3 hour writing lab which required me to write a lot. I don't know where all the words are coming from, but it's probably thanks to the movie I just watched. Movies tend to make me very chatty, especially if it is a movie which I enjoyed immensely.

So Oz The Great And Powerful.

I don't know about you, but I spent a great deal of my childhood immersed in the magic of fairy tales, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was one such fairy tale which managed to keep my 7 year old attention. I mean, who could resist the charms of iconic characters like the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Cowardly Lion? Not 7 year old me, that for sure.

When Disney announced their prequel focusing on the life of the titular Wizard of Oz, I was quite skeptical. For most of my life, the Wizard of Oz was a green head, who turned out to be a balding old man stuck behind a contraption. So when Disney released the trailer with James Franco playing the role of Oz, my childhood perceptions were shattered. James Franco is the least balding, and least old man I know. This wasn't Oz; this was Harry Osbourne and he was out to kill Spider Man. But say what you might about James Franco, I thought he was just so-so in a movie.

The CGI monkey has more emotion than he does.?

It's probably because he spends most of his time talking to a flying monkey (green screen) and a china doll (again, green screen).

There are several eye candies in the form of the witches.

Glinda, the Good Witch is played almost too perfectly by Michelle Williams. Mila Kunis looked extremely hot in the first half of the movie, before she turned into the Wicked Witch of the West. Her sister, the never seen before Wicked Witch of the East is played by Rachel Weisz, again, until she gets turned into a hideously hideous witch. This is probably the first time the Wicked Witch of the East is seen, because if you remember, she dies almost immediately in The Wizard of Oz, thanks to Dorothy's house squashing her flatter than a pancake.

What I really loved about this movie is the brilliant visuals. There has been much focus on the VFX artists after the Oscars, and this is one of the reasons why their protests are well grounded. As a kid, I imagined Oz through the occasional picture of the Yellow Brick Road and rolling hills of green. This Oz movie has taken my childhood visuals and made them a hundred times more real.

The multitude of colors, the various sorts of weird and unique flowers, river fairies...it was literally the Oz I imagined it to be.
The movie, being a prequel, also throws in a lot of references to the original story. It's a joy to be able to spot all the references to The Wizard of Oz, from the cameo by the Cowardly Lion, to how the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz came about...all the little details which I really enjoyed spotting throughout the movie. Of course, there are several things they never mentioned at all, like the Magic Red Shoes and how the Scarecrow and the Tin Man came to being.

Of course, if I am to be really honest, this movie will probably only appeal to children. The plot is highly predictable, the conversations between the humans are childish at best, and largely fit into the typical stereotypes of their characters (witches laugh like witches, etc.) and the laughs come from a flying monkey in a bellhop uniform.

It's everything adults scoff at, before returning to Bruce Willis killing people left, right and center.

Overall, this movie appealed to me, but that's probably because I'm very much a kid at heart. If you are a fan of The Wizard of Oz, either of the books or the 1939 technicolor movie, Oz The Great And Powerful is sure to appeal to you as well. Visually, I mean. I give this movie 3.5/5, mostly because it allowed me to see Oz in a way I've never seen it before.

Cheerios!

Source: http://leonhart90.blogspot.com/2013/03/movie-review-oz-great-and-powerful.html

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