Four stars. Rating: PG, and rather generously, for considerable fantasy peril, scary scenes and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.8.13
Disney got it right this time.
The Mouse House’s previous
attempt to sequelize L. Frank Baum — a high-profile release in the summer of
1985 — was a dark and dreary affair, its rich Oz-ian landscape sabotaged by a
grim atmosphere and a level of peril that bordered on child abuse. Opening Return to Oz with a sequence that finds little Dorothy sent to a primitive
psychiatric ward, and nearly subject to electro-shock therapy? What the heck
were the screenwriters thinking?
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| Having worked out a plan to steal the wicked witch's magic wand, thus removing her ability to fight back, Oz (James Franco, right) and his two companions — Finley and China Girl — wait for the proper moment to strike. |
Oz, the Great and Powerful, in
pleasant contrast, is a rich, imaginative and droll delight from start to
finish. To be sure, its protagonists face their share of peril — the winged
monkeys were the most terrifying part of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and that’s
still true in this new film — but the tone is more appropriately
adventure-scary, rather than psychologically twisted.
More to the point, scripters
Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire — drawing from more of the rich
material in Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — have fashioned a
prequel that cleverly imitates the style and formula established by the beloved
1939 musical, while also laying the groundwork to anticipate key events in that
earlier film’s storyline.
That’s no small accomplishment.
Better still, director Sam Raimi and editor Bob Murawski pace their film
perfectly, alternating essential character development with fantastical
encounters both exhilarating and unnerving.
And — as was the case with Tim
Burton’s recent re-boot of Alice in Wonderland, also for Disney — Raimi
doesn’t slow the pace by pausing and calling attention to Oz’s myriad wonders;
they’re simply present to be enjoyed, if even noticed the first time through. I
predict hot home-video sales and plenty of repeat viewings, in order to spot
and savor everything that production designer Robert Stromberg and visual
effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk have packed into this film.
Heck, when a dozen or so “horses
of a different color” graze quietly in a field — not even noticed by our main
characters, let alone commented upon — you know that we’re in good hands.
The story, set in the early 20th
century, begins roughly a generation before the events in the 1939 film. We’re
once again in a small Kansas community — displayed in time-honored
black-and-white, in a squarish, standard-frame image — this time in the shabby,
sepia-toned “tent city” of a worn and seedy traveling carnival. Its various
sideshow attractions include Oscar Diggs (James Franco), nicknamed Oz, a flashy
stage magician and rake of dubious ethics who likely has a woman at every stop
... with an angry father or husband right behind her.
