Oz The Great And Powerful

So I've been busy, lazy, ill, and otherwise preoccupied for a while, thus never posted the worst of what I saw in 2011...a list long forgotten at this point. Oh well. We move on. Perhaps the film at hand will make this year's list?

Probably not. Sam Raimi's Oz The Great And Powerful isn't quite bad enough to be awful, but isn't anywhere near good enough to be…well, good. The biggest problem? It's too simple. It's dumbed down. It's Disney PG, which means it's aimed at all people of all ages and therefore doesn't want to burden anyone's viewing experience with things like complex character motivations or emotional resonance. No, better to keep things basic...oh and don't forget the cleavage; there must be plenty of cleavage.

All three female leads are treated with equal disrespect, but the most damning image was the easiest to find.

Anyway, typical Disney crap aside - and not to pick on Mila Kunis, whom I actually like a lot and consider an underrated actress - this movie is somewhat miscast, the talented Mila included. She tops the list, actually, as the person most wrong for her role. She's just not good here, but she never had a chance; the two polarizing attitudes assigned to her character don't play on her strengths as a performer. Her witch Theodora is either super-sweet naive or genocidally raving, without much reason behind either sentiment. Kunis has more depth than that, and plays such depth very well; trying to express such a thin coating of emotion just comes across flat…she's actually too good to portray something this one-dimensional, so she fails at it. Not her fault, say I.

Michelle Williams is good, Rachel Weisz doesn't have enough to do, Zach Braff is totally wrong and rather annoying...Franco is fine though his character's too shallow, and yes I realize the guy is meant to be selfish and superficial - I'm saying that's all he is, until he grows as a person and learns to care about people blah blah blah we all know protagonists have to change…but throughout the story these are the only things that drive him. All his actions are based on simple emotional states and it just isn't enough to propel an entire narrative.

Enough psychological talk; let's get technical. The first twenty minutes is sepia-toned academy ratio, 1:33 to 1, or your basic square-like TV-shaped image, until Oz the man arrives in Oz the land and then color appears in widescreen 2:35 to 1. All of which is acceptable, it's a gimmick, I don't mind, I can go with it…except when watching this on DVD, on a regular old TV, it's twenty minutes of a tiny box taking up only half the real estate of the useable screen. Could they not encode the disc to play this section full screen, then go to the normal letterbox mode when the movie does? I know they can. I realize lots of people have giant 16:9 HD flatscreens, and I'm sorry my lack of finances has kept me in the dark ages for so long, but seriously, don't crop the image to half its size. And yes I tried adjusting it using both my DVD player and TV, but all they can really do is zoom in, which results in a plethora of pixellation, so…it's just stupid. That's all I'm saying.

You know what else is stupid? 3D. Yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks a movie should draw a viewer into its world with compelling characters and emotional truth, not a fake visual design the human eye can't properly contemplate. Even putting aside how it looks, it invariably changes the way the story is presented - I can always tell when a movie I'm watching in 2D has been directed to be in 3D, because the camera is constantly moving through things, or stuff is flying past it, or worse, something is thrust directly at the viewer, straight at the frame…it's like the movie is screaming "Hey look at this! Aren't I fun?" Ugh. Spare me.

As for the film's appearance otherwise, there are a couple expensive-looking sets but mostly it's expensive-looking CGI, some of which works and some doesn't. The compositing between the actors and Green Screen Land is often shoddy, Finley the Monkey looks awful and is lousy animation…yet the China Girl is an astonishing display of artistry, in the subtlety of her performance and how beautifully she's blended into the environment, both the real physical sets and the created backgrounds. Typically a film of this size and budget has several different FX houses working on various aspects of post-production; one can presume the disparity in workmanship is a result of those hired to handle the China Girl being way, way better at what they do.

So like I said near the beginning, the movie isn't awful or awe-full, but was definitely worth watching to see how the story was handled. And I'll say, between Disney and Raimi: not very impressively. But after all the junky Spider-Man nonsense and the utterly terrible Drag Me To Hell, I don't expect much from Sam the man anymore. Still, I might be cajoled into eventually checking out whatever he does next. We'll just have to see where the wind takes us.