Oz the Great and Powerful:

Even when I was a little boy, I always knew what sort of children's movies my parents would or wouldn't like. It had to be intelligent, witty and have the balls enough to send some rather dirty jokes right over the heads of kids to the parents to reward them for the hefty price tag that comes when you take your whole family to a multiplex. After I saw Oz the Great and Powerful, I was very confused indeed. I wasn't quite sure what type of kid's movie I had seen and the following is a list of reasons why.

The Acting : Oz  is an origin tale of the "wonderful wizard" we encounter in the classic Wizard of Oz.  Oz starts out as a scheming womanizer known as Oscar Diggs, with no real magical talent who dreams of greatness but doesn't seem willing to do the work to get it. At the same time, our hero is constantly needled by a desire to do the right thing, which of course doesn't happen until the end of the movie. Poor James Franco is probably more confused than we are the whole time. Every once in a while he gets a look on his face that tells us he really is uncomfortable in such a clean children's movie. At times I could almost hear the "that's what she said" jokes going off in his head to counter all of the ridiculously over-saccharine elements of the script. Acknowledging the ridiculousness of the film, Franco gives us some good chuckles every once in a while but ultimately cannot give this movie any real help. While I am happy Johnny Depp passed up on this one (do we really want a repeat of his Michael Jackson-like Wonka?), I can't help but think that Robert Downey Jr. would have been the perfect man for this role had he not turned it down himself. I would have thought that a Zach Braff and James Franco pairing would be an extremely funny pairing, but in the end Braff just isn't given anything to work with. Some briefly funny moments at the beginning of the film are great, but they stop there, and somehow the makers of this movie didn't see comedic potential in Braff voicing a flying monkey? Just scandalous. Mila Kunis seems to do relatively well at the start of the movie, but in the end her turn as Theodora, the eventual Wicked Witch, just doesn't seem to make much sense. When her character is a good witch , she's also somewhat of a jealous crazy girl, so when she turns evil the character development never happens. Word on the street is that this lack of making sense has her in the running for a razzie . The only people that seem to commit well to the movie  are Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams, and even they are turning coals of dialogue into diamonds. 

Special Effects: In the original classic Wizard of Oz, the change to colour upon arrival in Oz is one of the most iconic moments in the history of film-making  Thus I expected Oz to pull out all the visual stops when they opted to do the same thing and start out the movie in black and white. Unfortunately, after a year of seeing movies like Life of Pi, Oz's decent special effects and created world did not inspire any awe at all. It almost seemed like a mockery of the classic colour change to show the land of Oz so half-heartedly and no child born on this side of the millennium will bat an eyelid at the computer generated characters. 

 Dialogue: Don't misunderstand me, Oz is a children's film- I understand. Nearly all of my childhood  favourites (still my favourites) have some incredibly cheesy themes and lines. Lines like "I do, I do, I do believe in fairies" are just part of the gig. But at least most of them had the decency to tell me all about their hopes and dreams in a song instead of delivering it unconvincingly in the middle of an otherwise serious conversation. Part of what makes the original Wizard of Oz cool is that there are those ridiculous songs in it, and apart from one weird "munchkin song", which brought back politically incorrect echoes of the oompa-loompa songs in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there was no effort in Oz to harden the mushy message. Some may claim that the age of sing-along children's movies are over, but as Tangled shows, movies that focus in only on the kiddy- viewers can still do very well with those sing-along elements. 

Maybe fifteen years ago I would have enjoyed this movie. But I like to think that kids around the world are smarter than this muddled attempt at a promising premise.Despite a final third that is actually quite enjoyable, Oz will never be iconic in any shape or form, tossed aside a day after mummy buys it along with such movies as The Ant Bully, and The Land Before Time 6 (or 7,8,9 etc.). To make matters worse, box-office reports have been stellar and they're making a sequel! At least franchises like Ice Age started out somewhat seriously before dumbing down its content value and robbing families blind.