by Joseph Rossi
How can a director like Sam Raimi make a boring film? The director of the Evil Dead movies, Darkman and the underrated Drag me to Hell? Please, someone tell me because I sat there for two hours as Oz the Great and Powerful played before me and all I could think about was why did anyone bother to show up to the party and do nothing.
James Franco is Oscar Diggs, aka Oz, who is a small time huckster, circus magician and serial womanizer who gets whisked away via tornado to the land of Oz where it is assumed by three witches, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), Theodora (Mila Kunis) and Glinda (Michelle Williams), that he is a great wizard that has been sent to rid the land from the Wicked Witch of the West. This film borrows from the many works of L. Frank Baum. It tells us how the young man from Kansas became the man behind the curtain that we have come to know as the Wizard.
There is no direct link to the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, since that film is owned by Warner Brothers and this one by Disney. The filmmakers have gone to great lengths to create a world that is slightly different then the one from the Warner’s film due to legal reasons. But whatever legalities the screenwriters had to write around doesn’t give them an excuse to write banal, lifeless, expository dialogue delivered by actors out of their element.
I like James Franco. I think he’s a fine actor. Pineapple Express, Howl, 127 Hours are some fine examples of his work. But he has this contemporary edge to him that doesn’t fit with his latest character. The same goes with Kunis and Williams. Both seem too cosmopolitan for this world. I feel like I was watching a New York production of Wicked rather then a fantasy film. Only Weisz seems at home playing an evil sorceress. And by the way, any one who says they don’t see the big reveal coming is lying. Disney prides itself of keeping the identity of the Wicked Witch secret but it’s kind of obvious 30 minutes in and when she does appear in all her green skinned glory, I felt like going home and watch Margaret Hamilton don the hat and ride the broom.
I may be hard on the film but I have to admit that there are many fine elements in it. The photography is lush, the sets are exquisite, the score is actually amazing, but in the end the story doesn’t gel, the actors are miscast and I feel the director lost his focus. I love Raimi’s work. He’s always been a director that delivered films that surprised me. A Simple Plan was a revelation. He tightened the noose so hard in that one that we couldn’t breathe. In Drag me to Hell, he constructed an action sequence within the back seat of a car that will be studied by film students everywhere. Here, nothing. Nothing stands out as a Raimi film.
I was hoping for this one. Darn.
