Oz: the great and powerful

Oz: the great and powerful directed by Sam Riami

Hello everyone, I went to the theatre last night to watch the highly anticipated prequel to the all time classic "the wizard of Oz", here's what I thought about it.

First of all, I must say that I fell in love with the film for the first ten minutes, everything was so "classy" that really made a difference to the Blockbuster fever. However, that didn't last too much.

As you may know, this is how the wizard got to Oz, so, no Dorothy in this one guys! I have never been a big fan of the original, but I was somewhat curious about this one since it seemed like a pretty nice attempt to revive a classic. But there are some important problems that kept pulling me out of the story, which is obviously a bad thing.

First of all, the Wizard: I have nothing against James Franco, honestly, but I don't think he was the best actor to play that role, I didn't feel anything with his performance, and given that the wizard is not a character which is easy to empathise with, it was quite annoying to see an actor doing nothing but reading his lines on screen. That, I must say, did not last the entire film and towards the end, Franco's performance is way better, but you have already been there for an hour and a half, so it doesn't really count. Another issue is the length, is too bloody long, it felt like half of the film was completely pointless… but I'm guessing that they were more interested about great CGI rather than telling a great story (which, regarding the film's line "I don't wanna be a good man, I wanna be a great one", should have been the main priority).

I am not going to mention the witches or the supporting actors because apart from Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams no one made an impression on me. Obviously, most of the problems of the film come from a screenplay that wasn't at all interested in living up to what people expected, and was too concentrated on showing pretty stuff and creating great situations in which there could be great amounts of visual effects. Well, at least they did that right.

MadHatterSays: If you want spectacle, watch it, if you want a good film, watch something else.

                               2.5/5