Film Review: "Oz the Great and Powerful"

Over the last ten-ish years, one thing has become clear about special effects—they can enliven a movie’s backdrop, but they can also be a distraction from the characters, the raison d’être behind any great film.  In “Oz the Great and Powerful,” the latest pop extravaganza from the brilliant director Sam Raimi, those effects include flashes of green lightening, computer-generated baboon monsters, and other flurries that have a diluting effect, threatening to eclipse the film’s story.  Yet what they don’t blot out is quite compelling.  Packed with vibrant colors and beautiful actors, the movie has a compelling sincerity that reasserts itself at many very right moments.

            Oddly, the film’s wizard hero, Oscar (James Franco), is rather deficient in terms of sincerity.  He’s a smalltime magician with a few tricks up his sleeve, but not the heart to commit to his true love (Michelle Williams).  So it is with a few prayers that he enters into a tornado, one that sweeps him into the magical land of Oz.  If you’ve seen the original wizard of Oz film, than you’ve been here before.  But this new Oz has been rendered to stunning effect.  As Oscar lands in this brave new world, we swerves down a rushing river in a hot air balloon, before touching down in a piercing green forest where the “good witch” Theodora (Mila Kunis) is waiting to greet him.

            Thanks to a couple of reviews that spoiled the surprise, I came into “Oz” prepared to see Theodora transform into a distorted, green-faced wicked witch.  What I wasn’t expecting was for her to start off as such a charmingly naïve character.  Theodora’s wardrobe (a red hat with a swooped brim and some rather tight black pants) is smooth perfection but as a person, she’s charmingly vulnerable.  She believes Oscar when he promises to marry her, not even considering that he might just be an uncaring seducer.  Ms. Kunis plays the role of the unsuspecting girl with finesse, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking when she devolves into a rage-fueled monster.

            All in all, I was disappointed that Theodora’s role in the narrative was downplayed in favor of Oscar’s more noble sidekicks (a very cute monkey and ceramic girl).  As Glinda, the good witch who opposes Theodora, Michelle Williams is fine, but rootless virtue can’t compete with tortured vulnerability.  It can’t compete with munchkins either—those diminutive rascals make up Glinda’s army and don’t function properly as comic relief.  The banter between Oscar and the lead munchkin Nook is tiresome.

            In the end, it all builds up to a showdown between Oscar and Glinda versus Theodora’s army of wickedness.  It is here that Oscar finally redeems himself, putting the good of Oz before his own desire for wealth and power.  I wish though, that this transformation had more power.  In his masterful “Spider-Man” trilogy (one of the greatest adventure sagas of the new millennium), Mr. Raimi created a blockbuster narrative that zeroed in on the internal anguish of its heroes.  “Oz,” by contrast, has a hero whose flawed selfishness never receives quite as much attention as the film’s creatures and vistas (even though the tenderness of Danny Elfman’s music box score helps preserve much of the emotion).

            And yet for all that, I would hardly dissuade you from undertaking the film’s journey.  In the film’s best characters—Finley the monkey, the young ceramic girl, and the bitter Theodora—there is a wounded sweetness, a capacity to be hurt that is unforgettable.  And in their finest moments, the film’s special effects help bandage those wounds, like in the scene where Glinda soars above Oz is a rippling bubble, like an angel ascending into some kind of color-rich heaven.