Much like the title character, “Oz The Great and Powerful” is a flawed and limited movie that shows just enough flashes of brilliance to get away with it. We might roll our eyes at the by-the-book plot or chuckle at the cartoonish antics, but director Sam Raimi brings a whirlwind of colors and imagination that makes for an exciting visual experience, one almost worthy of the landmark film it’s inspired by. Though a bare bones plot and laughable character development suppresses it from being more than a rollercoaster of visual imagination, “Oz” is a fun family film so bloated with good intentions it’s easy to admire.
The character of Oz (James Franco) is so familiar at this point that his origin story is more than a bit obvious. A talented illusionist who’s better at wooing beautiful assistants than performing real magic, Oz begins as a charming but pompous showman tooling around a traveling circus in Kansas, where he sharpens his skills of tricking dimwitted crowds. He may project himself as a great magician, though he comes off as a pitiful charlatan clutching his vivid delusions of grandeur. When a little girl in a wheelchair asks him to heal her legs, all he can do is wish for a place to hide. A great wizard he clearly is not.
In a stroke of great luck, our flawed hero escapes the wrath of an angry wrestler by flying away in a hot air balloon, leaving the drab, colorless world of the traveling circus behind. Sucked into a devastating tornado, Oz is deposited in a wondrous world exploding with man-size exotic flowers, waterfalls and bizarre creatures, making him realize that he’s clearly not in Kansas anymore. In an homage to “The Wizard of Oz,” Raimi switches from black and white in the early scenes to a sumptuous color scheme that bursts off the screen, drawing us in visually the same way director Victor Fleming did more than 70 years ago. The impact may not be the same as when audiences gaped in awe at the screen as Judy Garland stepped out into the Land of Oz, but the landscape is still wondrous and bewildering.
But once the wow factor starts to wear off, unfortunately we have to start dealing with the plot, which has far less imagination. After his crash landing, Oz is helped by the enigmatic Theodora (Mila Kunis), who is so hopeful that Oz might be the man to save the day that she falls head-over-heels in love with him at the drop of a hat. She may be a powerful witch in her own right, but a simple lie from Oz and suddenly she’s parading him around as the savior of the land.
The problem for Oz is that it’s a much bigger job than he anticipated. Though Kunis’ sultry eyes will get him to say yes to just about anything, this time he’s bitten off far more than he can chew, and the terror starts to creep in when he realizes he’s now responsible for killing an evil witch and saving thousands of people. Also on his side, he hopes, is Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who flaunts the city’s great wealth to Oz in hopes that it will motivate him to kill Glinda (Michelle Williams). Glinda may seem maddeningly nice, but there are sinister plots at every turn, with Oz wrapped up in the middle of it.
Once the plot elements are set up, “Oz The Great and Powerful” seems to settle into autopilot, reworking the typical themes of a broken hero looking for redemption. But even while “Oz” hurdles toward its very typical ending, there are some great moments along the way that help us overlook some of its glaring story limitations. After he failed to heal the girl back in Kansas, Oz gets an opportunity to redeem himself by gluing together the legs of a living China doll, who looks beyond Oz’s flaws to suggest that he’s actually a great man after all. Oz’s assistant Finley (Zach Braff), a kind-hearted flying monkey with a bad habit of talking too much, also has some funny moments that keep the movie from taking itself too seriously.
Also helping is a fun and light performance from Franco, who is a good fit playing a devious con man who desires greatness despite his questionable moral behavior. Though there isn’t room for much range in the role, Franco rightly portrays Oz as a shifty and nervous showman who seems to constantly be afraid of being found out as a fraud. Michelle Williams also outperforms her sketchy dialog and shallow character by presenting us with someone who simply lacks the capacity for evil. It’s also good to see Rachel Weisz in a major movie again, but her talents are mostly wasted thanks to limited screen time and a character that could be lifted right out of the movie without anyone noticing.
If you’re looking for another great film that takes you back to the Land of Oz and recaptures the magic of the original, this one isn’t it. Though it’s fun to see how Oz got to be the man behind the curtain, his story is only loosely thought through and we’re eventually sucked back into the standard plot of good versus evil, which limits it from being more than a light pleasure for family audiences. But even with some fairly big blemishes, “Oz The Great and Powerful” is still a fully realized vision from director Sam Raimi that does just enough good things to help us get lost in its lavish imagination.
by RTT Staff Writer
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