Reviews: "Oz, the Great and Powerful"

For my journalistic writing class, our assignment was to write a review on a book or movie this week. Since I recently went to see "Oz, the Great and Powerful" with my Dad, I decided to write my review on that. Here it is:

"Oz, the Great and Powerful" proves to be not-so-powerful

Recently, my family and I traveled to the Fox Theatre in St. Louis to see the spectacular musical, "Wicked". After being thoroughly inspired by this musical, I had an even greater interest in Frank L. Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" than I had before. My sister and I watched the 1939 classic over and over until we finally wore the DVD out. So when we saw the preview for the movie "Oz, the Great and Powerful", we were ecstatic. 

As I sat in my seat, I could hardly contain my excitement as the movie began.The prequel to the "Wizard of Oz" begins in Kansas (in black and white, of course) in 1905, where Oscar "Oz" (James Franco) works as an unsuccessful magician and con-artist in a traveling circus.  When the winds start blowing, Oz finds himself in a hot air balloon and eventually in the magical land of, well, Oz. He goes on a journey to help save the people of Oz and become a great wizard, picking up several unique and interesting friends along the way. 

As the movie began, my immediate thought was "this is going to win an oscar." The special effects, especially for the 3D version, were truly amazing and I've never seen a 3D movie with such good special effects since the debut of Avatar. As the tornado came onto the screen it almost looked too real to be true. The spinning effect of the tornado combined with the objects popping out at you made you feel as if you were flying around inside the storm with Oz himself. 

The actual movie, however, was excruciating to sit through. The first 15 minutes was the only part of the movie that I actually understood what was going on in terms of the plot. The remaining 2 hours of the movie was very cheesy, confusing, and just flat out weird. The acting would have been up to par if the writer had not given the actors extremely corny lines and very odd love interests. The whole time I was thinking "There's no place like home" because I honestly would have rather sat at home than seen this disaster. I was really disappointed because this movie had so much potential, especially with all the amazing special effects they did and the quality actors that were casted. 

Overall, if you want to see some revolutionary special effects- go ahead and sit in this movie for the first few minutes, but definitely don't stay any longer than that, the rest of the movie is not worth your time; you'd be better off seeing Smurfs 2. 

XOXO 

Mikayla