Photograph courtesy of Disney Enterprises
Tim Burton is probably smiling somewhere. The director’s 2010 film Alice in Wonderland exhibited abundant style and sporadic cleverness, but was ultimately undone by its bland, clumsy approach to Lewis Carroll’s works. Three years later, however, Alice looks downright virtuosic when compared to Walt Disney’s latest effects-packed 3-D adaptation of a children’s lit classic, Oz the Great and Powerful. There’s no point in mincing words: Oz is an obnoxious boondoggle of a film, appallingly misconceived and executed on every level. Arguably, any feature that presents itself as a de facto prequel to The Wizard of Oz is practically setting itself up for dismissal, but director Sam Raimi’s film is not merely a third-rate cartoon with overblown ambitions. It’s a colossal, rainbow-hued middle finger to the beloved 1939 MGM musical, to L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels, and to the entire notion of functional fantasy adventure cinema.
The screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner is flat-out awful, yanking its characters through a fake-looking and listlessly “amazing” digital Oz without rhyme or reason. The dialogue is so dense with limp jokes, storybook pabulum, and ham-fisted exposition, one almost pities the actors. Every performer from James Franco on down looks lost—except, that is, for Mila Kunis, whose portrayal of the wicked witch Theodora is so jaw-droppingly dreadful, it’s unintentionally hilarious. As unaccountable as it seems, Oz the Great and Powerful recreates and amplifies everything that was dispiriting about the Star Wars prequels: the ghastly script, the unpleasant performances, the absurd characterization, the overload of visual effects, and the thick-headed disregard for its antecedents’ most appealing qualities. It adds up to a dismal, excruciating experience.
