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It’s a folly of spectacular proportions to try and recapture the magic of L. Frank Baum’s texts. MGM’s lavish and beloved musical is a milestone of special effects and makeup while simultaneously being a perfect example of big budget (musical) entertainment operating at the highest level. Any and every endeavor to recapture it has only ended in diminished artistic returns or lack of audience interest, or both a great deal of the time.
So, where does that leave Oz the Great and Powerful? Stuck in-between two different films, each fighting to top the other at any given moment, but it at least winds up be passably entertaining and very cute. If that seems like faint praise, well, it kind of is. Sam Raimi’s darker impulses are so much juicier and lively than the rest of the film surrounding them that it’s a pity Disney commanded him to rein it in.
For much of Oz, Disney clearly has given the orders that the tremendous amount of money that they spent to make the thing be placed on the screen. Each time we’re introduced to a new town or part of the forest in Oz, it unfolds for like five minutes as flower’s bloom and all the various fauna emerge. It’s pretty the first time it happens, as in, when our future wizard is introduced to the Land of Oz, but even that scene wears thin. There’s no point to half of the wonders on display, and too much of a good thing becomes dull and trying after a time. There’s more life and spirit in the matte painting and plastic-looking trees and leaves in the original than in all of the technical profundities on display here.
When Raimi is allowed to unleash his inner kitsch loving darker dramatist, Oz is wickedly entertaining. Mila Kunis’ transformation, Rachel Weisz’s sweetly monstrous witch, the pure dread the flying monkeys can generate or the remnants of an attack on a China doll village linger in the imagination. Disney used to know this and I found it be profoundly true, tales and images that generate terror in childhood linger in the imagination far longer than anything soft and sweet. The original film’s fairy tale simplicity, in which the Wicked Witch is possibly the most memorable character in the whole film, attests to this. When Disney let Raimi let his freak flag fly is when Oz proves to be something more than piggy-backing on a classic.
While James Franco tries his hardest, and it’s not really his fault that his performance is lacking a certain ingredient, he is slightly miscast as our hero. The character needs a very specific fast-talking snake-oil salesman charm, and Franco is too earnest, artsy and indie to project that kind of swarm. Mila Kunis gives it her all, but her witch ends up lacking and coming across as too one-note. Weisz and Michelle Williams are divine in their roles. Weisz seems to take great joy and be having a lot of fun in playing someone so bad and who enjoys being that way. Williams is a pallid beauty who finds the perfect combination between determined and ethereal as Glinda, and makes her eventually transformation into Billie Burke’s sweet and majestic version easily accessible.
However flawed and unnecessary Oz the Great and Powerful may be, it is still an incredible amount of fun. Perhaps if I was exposed to this as a child, I would be in absolute heaven and forgiving of its faults. But I can only view this film, tonal inconsistent and only too happy to help you gorge on eye-candy, as an adult. There’s a minor charm and a good deal of fun to be had, but it’s neither great nor powerful.
