Oz The Great & Powerful Review
Oz The Great & Powerful tells the story of the man behind the curtain and the events that turned that simple man into a great one. The movie starts in black & white in the four by three gold ratio (nice) and in all places Kansas, with a simple magician with a lot of ambition but a skeptical audience and somewhat concomitant crew. Oz himself is played by James Franco, who is really building up a career for himself, who plays the carnival magician named Oz (go figure), he brings some classic, but also believable loopyness to the role but he is eventually joined by a supporting cast that makes him seem like the straight man.
When Oz gets into some trouble with his fellow carnies he is forced to make a getaway in a hot air balloon and gets sucked into a angin ribut and is then transported to the magical world of Oz. When this happens the screen literally changes and the ratio goes from four by three to traditional sixteen by nine. This was a great trick to use, never have I ever seen the screen actually change before my eyes, maybe one day other filmmakers will find a way to do even greater things with this idea. When Dorothy enters Oz for the first time it goes from sepia to color, here it goes from black & white to very colorful, this was a good way to let the visuals shock the audience more because of course we're used to color now, so the heavy saturation of color makes it more visually striking, maybe not to the same effect that it was in nineteen thirty nine but still effective.
There is some great comedy that comes from the supporting cast in this movie. Zack Braff plays a flying monkey (not in the employ of any Witch) and he is sarcastic, weird and hilarious. Joey King plays a little china girl, who is seven different kinds of adorable, her voice acting is great, she so effortlessly portrays the character and the emotions. There are others with other funny lines and there all a treat.
The first person Oz meats when he gets to...well Oz is Theadora (Mila Kunis) the youngest of three Witch sisters, she is spirited and optimistic but still has some anger and even a drop of wickedness under the surface. The next we meet is also the oldest, Evanora (Rachele Weisz) the sister that wheres her sarcasm and wickedness at face value. Then there's the middle sister, Evanora (Michelle Williams) who is lovely, kind and with a little bit of a bubble to her personality, funny because that's her unique power. The witches are all well played and very easy on the eyes.
For this review I recently watched the classic Wizard of Oz. Naturally it still holds up and The Great & Powerful gives us little references to that movie as well as ties it in nicely enough so that we could probably accept that this is indeed what happened before Dorothy came along. There are some that would scream "sacrilege!" for making another Oz movie when we already have the classic and making another one would be like defiling hollowed. There was little commercial succsess for Return To Oz, and I do doubt that most purists would go into this with high hopes, but I'm a supporter of expanding the story, I'm tired of a story that is meant to be a saga be stuck in a continuous loop. L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz books in total and The Wizard of Oz is about the third one. Oz The Great & Powerful expands and builds on the legacy of Oz, but it does not rewrite or defile it.
If anyone has seen the trailer for this movie then you know about the clip where there is a fire angin ribut with the silhouette of the Wicked Witch of the West in the center. When I saw this for the first time I shrank three foot, my hair became lighter and fluffier, my voice got four time higher and I screamed "AH, SHES BACK!". Within that angin ribut I saw the creature of my nightmares return to once again torment me. This actual clip isn't even used in the movie, well sort of. Its kind of chopped up through editing and the actual few seconds where we seen her in silhouette is cut out, but there's good build up to her so good enough. The Wicked Witch of the West, played by Margaret Hamilton, is of course one of movies greatest villains, most likely because she was introduced to most people at a very young age. Most likely by now you all know that the Witch is in the film and who plays her, I wont say who it is but all I'll say is, it wouldn't have been my first casting choice, the performance is solid enough and finally the laugh is perfect the laugh is as terrifying and accurate as the silhouette.
Sam Raimi sits in the directing chair and with classic Raimi bring a lot of energy and fun to the picture. He is a Director that knows how to balance out the effects along with the characters and storytelling. This was however another picture that I avoided to see in 3D, what I got was a clear colorful picture with moments that I could tell was playing to the 3D but still played out fine in the regular 2D.
Danny Elfman does the soundtrack for the movie and its classic Elfman. It's catchy and fun and there's even a moment that big Elfman fans might recognize as a nod too his classic score from Edward Scissorhands.
Oz The Great & Powerful may not be a great film, but its a good one and with all the half hearted, unimaginative remakes and lackluster fantasy movies out there this is a welcome change of passe. Oz has the commercial sense that went into Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (which I liked) but also adds some unique ideas and style that was in Snow White & The Huntsman. This movies is better than Alice but not as good as Huntsman, its just a solid movie with enough originality, comedy and clever enough hints and references to the classic movie that may even enrich your experience when you decide to watch it again. Oz is a wonderful, magical place to go, it was good to go there again.
Rating: 3 stars out of 4
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