Blown opportunities are more than a mere occurrence in cinema. Take this, Oz The Great And Powerful for example. An origin of the Wizard of Oz from the classic original story and film of the same name has so much potential against the backdrop of the wonderful land of Oz. However, when you hand it to someone incapable, we have the equivalent of taking a Ferrari and using it to mow your lawn.
Life regrets and letting his one true love get away doesn’t stop Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) being a deadbeat con artist and womanising magician. Making a run from a circus strongman in a hot air balloon seemed a good idea at the time until he gets propelled to the weird and wonderful Technicolor land of Oz. Within 5 minutes, Oz wastes no time introducing himself to the locals, especially Theodora The Good (Mila Kunis, Ted). After being told of a prophecy about his ascension to ruler of Oz and meeting with Theodora’s sister, the not-so-secret Wicked Witch Evanora (Rachel Weisz, Bourne Legacy), he sets off to take on the supposedly bad witch Glinda (Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn). Through his various adventures and odd characters he meets, it’s up to Oz to rise to the challenge and take up his prophesised mantle as The Wizard Of Oz.
God bless James Franco for making this watchable. He drives the film along with his completely smooth routine, going around, chatting up every attractive woman on screen. Such charisma is terrific on anyone, although it’s strange to have a fully functional and rounded immoral but willing to change character against the backdrop of Oz. Of course, being a Disney movie, there’s a character arc with Oscar becoming a better person but he’s never portrayed as a bad or awful human being at all in the first place so the end scenes with hints of him escaping fall a bit flat. Worth watching performance from Franco despite the dodgy moral arcs.
I wish I could say the same for the three top female leads. Kunis, Weisz and Williams all come off badly in a rather sexist plot and script. They fail to function properly around the introduction of this foreign, super sexy, wooing male, making them poor female stereotypes from something I’ve not seen since 1950’s cinema.
Kunis does what she does best – looks pretty and swells in a bustier – but her transformation and character into the proper green faced Wicked Witch Of The West is bloody shocking. She gets jilted by Oz and mopes to her very much so evil sister about it who offers to transform her into being more wicked than possible. Theodora takes her up on this offer and turns, only to not really do anything wicked in the rest of the film. She turns up and scares a few people, but I kind of wanted more. Given the fantasy genre has produced epic and shocking spectrum shifts in characters, no one will lose sleep over Theodora’s change as it just happens with no real conviction with quality acting from Kunis.
The near-anonymous entity that is Glinda is not really helped by the bland Williams. As the good witch, she doesn’t inspire a populace as you expect and there’s an excellent juxtaposition placing the charismatic Franco next to Williams in any scene. Weisz does an average job as Evanora with no real mystery behind her allegiance to the dark side, but that’s more a problem with the script that Weisz herself.
Scrubs star Zach Braff is at least good casting voice wise for Finley, Oz’s helper flying monkey. Despite some very ugly CGI and the character being completely forgotten about in the final third, Braff’s emotions in his voice bring the watchable creature to life. He excels in the opening Kansas sequence as the put upon servant to Oz’s magic act too. Disney TV actress Joey King at least delivers as the little living doll China-girl who is actually made from china. She gets it right as a spoilt, whiny girl although she comes across as a bit too mature at some points.
Sam Raimi of Spider-Man and Evil Dead fame directs and the odd choice for director reflects back on the film. There is some creative genius, especially in the opener which is filmed in a letterbox style akin to the original Wizard of Oz film. Despite the rest of the 3-D being a complete waste of time and some dire CGI, the 3-D with various objects flying out of the letterbox and into the black of the rest of the screen is really cool. But then I remember the crap script, average performances and uninteresting visuals and proclaim that a few moments of magic doesn’t salvage Raimi’s duff direction on this project with massive potential. If anything, Oz The Great And Powerful gives us the worst cameo Raimi’s buddy for life Bruce Campbell will ever take part in.
There’s enough nods to the original Wizard Of Oz and other related Oz stories to keep anyone happy. Plenty of cameos will entertain all, ranging from how the cowardly Lion possibly becomes such a big scaredy cat and hints towards the origins of the Tin Man and Scarecrow. Oz itself is a spectacular if over-heavy on the computer graphics marvel. With crystal flowers instantly blooming alongside the yellow brick road, it’s certainly interesting but there’s unoriginalality abound and it feels so artificial with the obvious green screen techniques. It’s so easy for filmmakers to create something using computers nowadays, but it takes you out of the film when there are no real props etc. for actors to interact with.
There is some massive gaps in logic geography wise which reflects badly on the citizens of the Emerald City. The ruined cutely titled China-town, where China-girl comes from, is completely wasted in a raid by the Wicked Witch’s minions. We’re then told this is two hours walk away from the City. Doesn’t that make everyone in the City a bit, y’know, soulless for blatently avoiding the towers of smoke coming out of the wrecked and ruined town? At my pace it’s a good 7 miles away, easily detectable!
An air of unoriginality surrounds when it comes to the use of magic in the film. All three witches have such boring powers with the most testing use being to create energy and fire bolts. Apart from the ‘turn evil’ apple Theodora eats there’s no exciting or different imagery from anything we’ve seen from the fantasy genre to make it stick. In fact, the trickery Oz uses through to fool various people especially in the finale is far more interesting. A real shame considering we have supposedly one of the iconic big bads of film magic in the Wicked Witch.
Unfortunately it’s left open-ended enough to set up a franchise with multiple sequels. There’s not enough substance here to suggest that Disney, Raimi or the writers have any interesting ideas to take the adventures of these character in the land Oz forward. Everything in Great And Powerful sets up the original film fine enough, so this film feels a bit rushed. In fact, you’ve probably got enough here for a decent trilogy so bit weird to see ‘any excuse for a dollar’ Disney bombing through so much material. What else is there to do with the traditional Wicked Witch Of The West? She’s set up shop already, totally evil without redemption… it would just be completely and utterly boring to do anymore stories in the Land Of Oz with these characters.
On the face of it, Oz The Great And Powerful really isn’t that great and that powerful. A shameless remake-quel of the original Wizard Of Oz with a bit of heart washed in a sea of bad CG. It’s weird because there’s a perfectly good ‘James Franco is a womanising tool and learns to better himself’ movie here but it gets caught up with the history and forced tricks of the land of Oz. Missed opportunity that could have been worse not for an unexpected decent storyline.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
