
The general consensus was that
both James Franco and Mila Kunis were out of their depth for this type of film;
both are good actors, but they’re not strong ones. And if you’re making a
prequel to a 74 year-old classic, you better have a strong story (which was
another complaint about the film) to match the near perfectness of The Wizard of Oz. “Oz the Great and Powerful is entirely serviceable family
entertainment. Problem is, serviceable doesn’t quite cut it when you’re talking
about the magical land of Oz” said Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News.
Instead, we’re given a weak story, miscast leads and –as someone else pointed
out –Zach Braff of Scrubs channeling
Nathan Lane in the worst ways as the voice of Finely.
The other aspect that may have
surprised viewers was the fact that the movie can only pay homage to the
original film because of Warner Bros holding the rights to all the imagery in
the Judy Garland version. And while Disney’s 1985 attempt –Return to Oz- tried to be faithful to the novels and not the film,
it withered on the vine by critics and fans who felt it was too dark for
children. Canadian film critic Jay Scott felt the protagonists were too creepy
for viewers to sympathize with: “Dorothy’s friends are as weird as her enemies,
which is faithful to the original Oz books but turns out not to be a virtue on
film, where the eerie has a tendency to remain eerie no matter how often we’re
told it’s not.”
“It’s bleak, creepy, and
occasionally terrifying,” added Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader added.
So what we get is a visually
spectacular film, using all the wizardry created by the VFX artists who spent
hundreds of hours toiling over it, but its film that stands thematically and
visually apart from The Wizard of Oz.
A movie empty of substance, sold to an audience who are easily distracted by
colorful computer generated light. And besides, it took 74 years to do this
prequel, and I don’t think anyone ever thought –or even cared- in those seven
decades it was necessary to find out how Oz ended up with their wizard.
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