Oz: The Great and Powerful

If there's anything I hate most about classic Hollywood, it's the three-star The Wizard of Oz in ethereal Technicolor colors, the auteurist wonder Citizen Kane, and The Wisconsin School. Yet, amazingly, Raimi's visionary approach and love of 1905 technological advances did the trick. So, if James Franco, who has proven he can play leading roles in spectacles and downright intimate dramas about a man, a rock and a hand, Bruce Campbell in a horrible mask, Ted Raimi somewhere in the crowd, Danny Elfman over a sheet of music, etc., are all in place, then everything is perfectly fine. The epicenter of pleasure is based on the presence of the praxinoscope and other technical proto-crap, the Edison name, and on the fact that 3D has its cards nicely laid out on the table (in-depth and off the screen), and I actually experienced for the first time what Curly Sue did back in 1991. What a time gap! The porcelain girl was incredibly sweet, but somehow I still can't figure out which of the witches was more loveable. Finally, proper girl wars! (06/03/2013)

For the first half, I was seething with the words: "This isn't a movie, it's just a dusty attraction!". A chain carousel that gives you the creeps, a product for one purpose: so that the capos at Disney can afford new limousines. But there is one big BUT. Although I subscribe to a completely different world of cinema, I ended up feeling like someone on a weight loss diet who visits a candy store with all its delicacies wrapped in colorful and at first glance tempting packaging, and bites into one of them. Superficial, I know, but sometimes you just succumb to something like that easily. The last act improved the final impression, and the incorporation of technical conveniences into the fairy tale world was reminiscent of the best of The Wizard of Oz from 1939, or Vaughn's Stardust, which is still proof that a fairytale can be done in a clever way. So in the end....in the end, it wasn't as silly and overwrought as the disastrous trailer might make it seem. (09/03/2013)

James Franco is badly miscast here. The two witches played by Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz cannot hold a candle to the Charlize Theron from Snow White and the Huntsman. The only thrilling scene in the film is the chase with the muscley guy in the black and white prologue. And the only magical moments are those with the porcelain doll. This didn’t turn out well, which is surprising with Sam Raimi, who is generally successful, be it in small thrillers and horror movies or blockbusters. (14/03/2013)

As it sometimes happens, you get movies reviewed here at Filmbooster that most people would expect to provide them at least with some proper cinematographic entertainment. Well, Sam Raimi is no dummy, so it was clear also that what he would make wouldn’t be your typical genre movie, but a typical blockbuster that can make a lot of money. And if I set aside the sometimes too wacky editing, or the crazy camerawork, and given the way people criticize this movie and bring it down to average, I was pretty satisfied. Sure, you can see that the whole thing is shot in front of a green screen, but I didn’t mind that. The premise of the story is a bit different than what you’d expect. This is no Alice in Wonderland. At times, it’s scary, especially the characters of the witches themselves – that’s pretty typical for the director… and at times it can really lift you up and make you laugh. And that’s good to know. The movie has it in it. The fact that it’s not the way everybody had dreamed it would be and everybody’s upset, that’s another thing. Sam Raimi simply made a fairy-tale with everything that entails. I was satisfied and I must admit that James Franco’s transformation in this movie was flawless. (05/02/2014)

Raimi has taken a story for little girls and re-vamped it into a movie for little boys with a soft-spot for machinery and magic tricks. Edison’s legacy is alive even here and I’m glad. However, it fails when confronted with real magic and some aspects are very jarring. Paradoxically, it is the Land of Oz itself, its laws and its fame are responsible for this, because the story about a dapper fraudster who finds good inside himself works only in terms of its artiness, but is spoiled by the poor production design, full of obviously digital or even plastic substitutes for the real world. Franco isn’t suited to a world like that, but that’s what I liked about his Oz. He’s a modern person, but with fantasy and ending up in this strange land doesn’t surprise him, he just wants to get as many laughs as he can from it (the scene with the cashier reminds me of Scrooge McDuck). I didn’t like the trio of magicians one bit. Just Mila Kunis was magically naive at the beginning, but things went downhill with her after her transformation. If a new and original world were presented or if I were younger, I would have given Oz: the Great and Powerful more. P.S.: I get Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz confused and these alternative stories don’t help me at all. Is it only me, or you have a similar problem? (28/05/2013)