At face value this film has a lot to recommend it and as a night’s entertainment for the family, this movie should do just fine. The director, cast, source material and special effects all should add up to a wonderful and long overdue return to the land of Oz. Unfortunatly, beyond Box Office chattel, not so much.
Hats!
There are things that work like the wonderful costumery, especially the hats. The shear number and variety of hats is impressive enough, but the care and design that went into them, and the entire waredrobe, are a pleasure to see. The lavish production design and elaborate 3D special effects are admittedly dazzling but here also begins its problems.
The introduction, like the Wonderful Wizard oF Oz, is in black and white. It is the strongest segment of the story, introducing us to the irascible con man Oz scrapping by in a Kansas traveling carnival. Transitioning to the hypercoloured world of Oz the film goes flat and the dynamism apparent in the B&W introduction vanishes never to be seen again. The story turns into a flimsy thing stringing together fantastical settings. The shooting style and performances suffer from Greenicitus, when characters just statically stand around in front of a green screen, a symptom of being too effects focused. You can tell how restricted the film becomes as it slaves to the requirements of the effects.
There’s got to be a story around here somewhere
Now Raimi has done several major effects productions, including the three Spiderman films. While some of these problems arose in the first Spiderman, the second and third had vanquished these problems so its somewhat tragic to see a Raimi film suffering so. My guess is so much money went to the computer side of things that the production shoots were done on the cheap. The mountain backdrop to one of Oz’s speeches was so false looking it brought to mind Tommy Wiseau’s roof top scenes from The Room!
The cast should be wonderful, talented, charming, beautiful; yet there is little for them to do even as they represent iconic characters deep set in our collective culture. Aside from the problem of being left to emote standing in a green screened studio the script is so weak I can hardly blame them for struggling through the material. Which brings us to the real problem with Oz The Great And Powerful: the story.
Behind me, all green screen baby!
There are so many problems with the story its hard to know where to begin. It’s a stretch to call them characters as the mechanics of it are so sparse and blatent its hard to take any joy in their stories. The writing is so lazy that what should be have the epic sweep of one of the greatest fantasias ever imagined feels claustrophopic and pitiful. This is not a glimpse into an expansive magical world, its a narrow corrador with 3D wallpaper.
True Oz stories are also rooted in central female characters. This production subverts that whole tradition, relagating the women folk to secondary roles as silly creatures waiting for and endlessly servicing the vainglory of an unscrupulous man who through no effort or merit, is given imminent power over all their lives. Even the powerful witches of Oz become nothing more then weak female cliches defined only through their relationship to this guy who just happen to show up. The doting girlfriend Glenda, the bitter ex of the west given to tantrums, the scheaming female pretending to power and, well, that’s it really. Pretty lame considering the impressive history of women in Oz which was intrinsic to its lasting power as a story. In this Oz The Great And Powerful could be looked at as an indicative reflection of how our culture views the roles of women with Disney producing the reinforcing propaganda. That this prequel records the great steps backwards we’ve been taking in our portrayals of women.
This is also an oddity for Raimi, his film Drag Me To Hell had a strong woman driving the story and tackling adversity head on. None of that here, just wait for some man to come and he’ll take care of everything as long as you put up with whatever he does and baselessly believe in him with all your heart. The original point of the Wizard had been to help Dorothy realize that the power is within her and that he is nothing but smoke and mirrors, the exact opposite of what this film presents to us.
The China Girl as the cute little side kicked was the only character that felt at all right. Her animating effects and voice work were also superb.
Mila Kunis is sadly gets the worst of it, the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West reduced to screaming tandrums because some boy didn’t like her as much as she thought he did. Her perfomance seemed lost and inconsistent but I can hardly blame her, there didn’t really seem to be much for her to go on.
The witch battle at the end between Glenda and Evanora was not bad but too short and simple. Its not often we get to see an all out witch battle so it seems like a wasted opportunity. In fact most of this movie is composed of wasted opportunity, all posturing with little to no payoff.
Oz The Great And Powerful isn’t as bad as the atrocious Alice that Disney put out a few years ago, though suffering from remarkably similar problems. Alice being subplanted by the MadHatter, greenicitus, lazy writing, a director and a cast that promise quality but fail, lots of effects and little satisfaction. At least Oz didn’t have a silly MadHatter dance. I never thought I would feel embarrassed for Johnny Depp but then there it was.
So come on Disney, if you’re going to hijack our culture at least put out some half decent children’s lit adaptations. You butchered Wonderland, you’ve sullied Oz, what’s next on your list of appropriation and degradation? Using these classic tales for little more then name recognition is an utter waste of production and an insult to the young audiences you are so rapaciously coralling into a twisted vision of the world. Make all the crap you want, but if you’re going to seal up the great fables of history in your copyright portfolios, put a little effort into following the spirit behind them. The canon’s of these great masterpieces will surely reject these tepid entries. History will tell.
Addendum (March 18, 2013): …then my blood sugar crashes and I’m ranting about Disney. The language may be a bit tart but it does stick in ones craw to watch these timeless tales reduced to such uninspired depths, so no recant!
I also recalled Sam Raimi’s other, more famous, female protagonist, Xena: Warrior Princess! That alone should put to rest any doubt about Raimi’s ability to handle female characters.
The producer of this film is Joe Roth who also produced Disney’s 2010 Alice so their similar faults make sense. He was also an uncredited executive producer for Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers so I guess he’s not ALL bad.
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