I doubt I was alone in my initial disappointment when I heard Sam Raimi was doing a big budget prequel to The Wizard Of Oz. It seemed like the first step towards Sam Raimi becoming Tim Burton, the very idea of which wakes me up in a cold sweat most nights.
But I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong; and today I’m very manly, because I was very wrong. Raimi has taken what seems like a terrible idea and turned it into something wonderful and unexpected: a Sam Raimi movie for kids. Look, I’m probably not going to have kids. But if something horrible happens to me and I wind up with a little tax dependant of my own, it would probably be wrong of me to introduce them to the glory that is Sam Raimi by plopping them in front of The Evil Dead. Though, now that I’m thinking about it, the possibility of doing that kind of makes me rethink my ‘no kids’ stance…
I’m getting off topic here. My point is, this is every inch a Sam Raimi movie: alternately goofy, creepy, stylish, campy, fun, and scrappy in a way that most movies simply can’t pull off, let alone one that must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And there’s nothing in it that I would be worried about showing to anybody over the age of six or seven.
It’s greatly imaginative, and imbued with a genuine sense of wonder that, again, so many movies forget about. Many of today’s movies use CGI to create things beyond imagination, which are then treated like they’re no big deal, or dismissed with a witty one-liner. The amazing things in this movie are actually treated like amazing things by the characters, which leads to the audience feeling the same.
Doing most of the gaping in wonder is our hero, James Franco, playing Oz. The best part of his portrayal (if not the movie in general) is how Franco makes Oz a genuine scoundrel. Self involved, greedy, and a true con man at heart; he doesn’t sand down the rough edges and the script doesn’t let him off the hook for his many, many transgressions. He’s so good that when the final battle came, I was genuinely unsure that he was going to stay and fight. I mean, we all know how this story is going to end, but (without going too far into spoilers) there was a beat when I didn’t know whether he was going to make the right choice or he was going to be forced into doing the right thing. And Franco, with his breezy opaqueness, really sold that moment.
Joey King is great as China Girl, an adorable porcelain psychopath; and Abigail Spencer as one of Oz’s would-be conquests is so winning in her brief appearance that part of me wanted her to show up again in Oz proper. While Zach Braff as a human being seems to set some people’s teeth on edge, I think he’s an inspired choice for a Sam Raimi movie. There’s always been something vaguely cartoonlike about him, and Raimi uses him about as well as anyone ever has. I kind of hope they do more stuff together.
Mila Kunis is all wide-eyed guilessness with phenomenal taste in hats as one of the good witches, though she isn’t particularly well served by certain inevitable third act plot points. And it’s actually quite nice to see Michelle Williams in a big budget movie like this, applying the same care and dedication to her role as Glinda that she would to an indie project. She could have phoned it in and the movie probably wouldn’t have suffered too badly, but she chose to give her character’s boundless kindness and generosity a wry, knowing edge. But my favorite performance comes from none other than Rachel Weisz as Evanora, who gets to be alternately coy, calculating, ingratiating, malevolent, and fearful. It’s a showy role, and Weisz approaches it with a playful subtlety.
Also, it pleases me greatly that Bill Cobbs is still alive. I love that guy.
I was not expecting Oz The Great and Powerful to be genuinely character driven, but again, serves me right for underestimating Sam Raimi. Sure, there is a story, but it exists only to move Franco from being a faithless scoundrel to… a scoundrel with slightly more altruistic intentions.
Which brings me to the single most enjoyable aspect of the movie: the fact that it’s message is essentially an argument for the merits of bullshit.Which brings me to the single most enjoyable aspect of the movie: the fact that it’s message is essentially an argument for the merits of bullshit. Franco doesn’t win the day by being stronger, or even smarter, really. He wins by trickery, manipulation, and good old fashioned hucksterism. He doesn’t change or learn that his old ways were wrong so much as he learns to apply them for more noble causes. It’s a clever inversion of the usual thing. And it’s really great to see an idea that subversive in a children’s film.
Raimi and his technicians create some amazing imagery, but sometimes the cast doesn’t seem very well integrated into the scenes, which may be a result of me seeing it in 2-D and not the way nature intended, which costs extra |Editor’s note: I enjoyed the 3D|. Still, the disorientation goes away fairly quickly as you get wrapped up in the characters and the story.
In the end, this was a delightful surprise. And for once I might actually look forward to a sequel to a prequel. Now how often do you get to say that?
Never. The correct answer is never.
