(USA, 130 min.)
Dir. Sam Raimi, Writ. Mitchell Kapner and David
Lindsay-Abaire
Starring: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams,
Zach Braff.
The sexy witches from Cabin
in the Woods have escaped, and they are hiding in the land of Oz. Oz: The Great and Powerful offers a
feisty Betty and Veronica tale between the good witch Glinda (Michelle
Williams) and her wicked sisters (Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz). Betty and
Veronica might be as old as The Wizard of
Oz is (they’re two years younger than the 1939 film), so this new take on Oz might not sit comfortably with a
contemporary audience thanks to some classic-era gender roles. Antiquated views
on femininity aside, the film provides its three leading ladies with some
entertaining parts. Thank goodness for Weisz, Williams, and Kunis’s turns as
the scene-stealing sorceresses, since this origins story of the Wizard of Oz
conjures little magic from the wizard himself.
Star James Franco isn’t necessarily a poor choice to play the fortuitous wizard. He’s actually quite fun in the film’s campy bits, but the lack of spark in the wizard’s story betrays the thinness of this unnecessary return to Oz. This prequel to the L. Frank Baum tale doesn’t offer as magical an origins story as, say, a stage production of Wicked does, since screenwriters Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards) and David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) script a flimsy backstory for the wizard that essentially rewrites The Wizard of Oz verbatim and has the wizard stand in for Dorothy. Oz is nevertheless as effects-laden and full of tongue-in-cheek humour as its Broadway cousin is, so it might delight when seen on the big screen.
Like the original film, Oz
opens in a square-ratio black-and-white preface that sees the Oz (aka Oscar
Diggs) scraping by in desolate Kansas. Oz, like Dorothy, dreams of somewhere
over the rainbow where skies are blue. Thankfully, Franco doesn’t sing
any ballads, nor does he have a little dog named Toto (the casting directors
missed a great opportunity for Uggie), but his greyscale gloominess introduces
a cast of characters that will appear later in the film.
Oz is swept up in a familiar tornado and dropped into the
magical land that bears his name. There, after the shot expands to a vibrant widescreen rainbow, he meets a witch named Theodora the Good
(Kunis). Theodora, who seems like a white swan in a Rumpelstiltskin hat,
prophesizes that the man who fell from the sky is the wizard destined to save
Oz. Theodora is instantly infatuated with Oz and she talks of marriage as she
leads him to the Emerald City.
Not much in the Land of Oz seems very different from the
Victor Fleming film as the wizard strolls the Yellow Brick Road. The stranger
in a strange land is faced with a task similar to Dorothy’s, as he must defeat
the Wicked Witch in order to find freedom. The only real difference between
Oz’s trip and Dorothy’s is that Dorothy knew whom she was fighting.
Faced with a cackle of witches, Oz hardly knows which of the
land’s magical keepers his enemy is. These three witches, unfortunately, are
defined entirely by men like Oz, and they change with in tune with a mere spell
of masculine magic. Evanora (Weisz) looks shockingly evil in her gothic gown
and her ornaments of crows’ feathers, and she hypnotizes Oz with the hottest witch
costume he’s ever seen. Weisz plays Evanora as a delectable temptress, but Oz casts her looks as a bigger charm
than her otherworldly powers. Ugliness is wickedness in the Land of Oz, so
Evanora’s allegiance to the wizard is mostly ambiguous. Theodora, on the other
hand, is portrayed as a deranged and clingy lover. Kunis, once again enjoying
the role of the black swan, dons a full-scale make-up job to become an ugly
duckling when Theodora feels jilted by the wizard’s affection. Weisz and Kunis
are a ferocious hoot as Oz’s scorned women, but the witches of Oz were never
quite the scheming bitches that The Great
and Powerful portrays them to be.
Equally characterized by Oz is Glinda, the Good Witch.
Glinda, played by Michelle Williams, appears dark and mysterious when Oz spies
her in a graveyard and assumes her an enemy. Reported by Evanora as the killer
of Oz’s king, Oz and his fellow sidekicks (a china doll and a flying monkey in
place of the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion) fear this woman with the black
cape and magic wand. Then, when she offers a quick line of dialogue and reveals
herself to be blonde, virtuous, and dressed in virginal white, Oz takes her
innocence verbatim and enlists her to join his pair of annoying Jar Jar
Binks-ish sidekicks and help save Oz.
Williams, whose humble down-to-earth aura provides a worthy
replacement for the original’s Billie Burke, is the only one of Oz’s female stars to appear in both the
body of the tale and the black-and-white preamble. Williams has a dual role
with a quick part as Oz’s former flame, Annie, who appears and tries to coax Oz
to counter a proposal for marriage from their mutual friend John Gale. Annie’s
future husband foreshadows the birth of Dorothy, and Williams’ reappearance
provides the star-crossed Wizard of Oz a new love interest. Glinda isn’t so
much a Good Witch in Oz: The Great and Powerful
as she is a muse or a reference point.
Oz: The Great and
Powerful takes a weak script and plays connect the dots with citations from
the original film. Director Sam Raimi (Drag
Me to Hell) crafts a new visioning of the Land of Oz with imaginative
special effects that are enhanced by striking, if unnecessary, 3D additions.
The CGI fairy-tale kingdom doesn’t necessarily look any more magical than it
did in 1939, although some of Oz’s magic tricks are admittedly more impressive
than the smoke-and-mirrors ruse of the original.
The film is ultimately a throwback to our love for movies
since the epic showdown between Oz and the Wicked Witches culminates not in a
blow-for-blow of magical forces, but in a send-up to the power of cinematic
special effects. Oz, a fan of the early moving pictures by Thomas A. Edison,
proves himself a true special effects wizard. Like kids enchanted by the
impressive visuals of the classic film, which still holds up by today’s
standards, the Wicked Witches are put under the spell of cinema. As Oz’s big
head pops-out of the screen and overpowers the evil sisters, Raimi uses the
latest in special effects technology to honour one of cinema’s earliest VFX
achievements.
One could easily see this extravagant $200 000 000
blockbuster as an epic bastardization of a cinematic milestone. On one level, Oz: The Great and Powerful isn’t fit to
wear the ruby slippers since it’s such an uneven and redundant retread of the
best fantasy film ever made. Whether Oz
aims to enchant children or film buffs is hard to decipher. It’s far too long
and bloated for most kids to enjoy, and it doesn’t really add anything to a film
with an everlasting legacy. On the other level, Oz exploits Raimi’s kitschy effects-laden style to offer a wholly
entertaining tale. Oz is a lot of
fun, in its own self-referential, hyuck-hyuck
way.
Oz: The Great and
Powerful is certainly an improvement over similar reinventions of classic
cinema like Tim Burton’s 2010 misfire Alice
in Wonderland. (Or, worse, his 2005 turkey Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) The playful spiritedness of
Raimi’s direction offers an undeniable technical achievement, while the trio of
witches cast the right spell to keep the action flowing. Franco might have
wandered too far into the field of poppies (or smoked them), but he too works
with Raimi’s magic charm when the camp comes together just right. Don’t run off
to see the wizard, but don’t fear another trip down the Yellow Brick Road,
either, since Oz is has just enough of the Wizard's movie magic
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Oz: The Great and Powerful opens in wide release March 8th.
