Ripping Good Yarns! The Kinda Great and Entertaining Oz!

Opened last Friday at our local bijou!

I finally got to a movie in time where an actual review would be practical! After seeing the play done by Flying Dragon five times in the two weekends prior, we of course couldn't help but want to see this move!  

And....I liked it!  It was very entertaining and evocative of the world that L. Frank Baum created in a series of fourteen books at the turn of the century.  It is the great American fairy tale, steeped in our culture and politics.

Oz The Great and Powerful is a great extension of E Pluribus Unum - Out of many, one.  The individual ingenuity of Oscar "Oz" Diggs is combined with the strength of community of his munchkin/tailor/farmer allies to create a force strong to combat the powerful evils arrayed against them.

The sets and backgrounds look awesome, as well they should with the movie costing north of $200 million dollars.  The plotting ties in well as a prequel to the 1939 movie.  This movie is correctly set in 1905, but some of the characters in the movie are jarringly more 21st century in their reaction to things.

This is a good fantasy movie.  Not quite the level of say, The Princess Bride or the original Wizard of Oz, but quite entertaining nonetheless.  It is well worth a family trip to the theater, and it is rated PG.  The very young may find some of the Flying Monkey and/or witch scenes a little too scary, but overall it is milder than most of what Hollywood puts out.

Definitely worth another trip to Oz!  See it if you can!

Two of the more entertaining characters are CGI - China Doll and the Flying Monkey Finley (with better facial expressions than some of the human actors) where the question is finally asked - Why is the monkey dressed like a bell hop?

Greeting the citizens of Oz and assuring the crowd of his magnificence.  James Franco was good in the role but not truly great.  He's a little flat and underwhelming at times.  I couldn't help but picture what the movie would have been like if the first choice had taken the role - Robert Downey, Jr.  Now THAT would have been a Wizard.

On the other hand, I'm not sure anyone on the planet could have been as good as Michelle Williams was as Glinda.  Her expressions and reactions were perfect, and I have rarely seen an actress look as beautiful.