It was always going to be a tough job for director Sam Raimi to take on a project that’s a prequel to what is one of the most beloved films of all time. But he’s delivered a fantasy experience that’s actually quite a lot of fun, filled with plenty of playful creativity and visuals that give new meaning to the word resplendent.
The film tells the origin story of the Wizard before he gained that title. He starts off as a Kansas magician who gets accidentally swept up in a hot air balloon into a hurricane, soon finding himself in the mystical and fantastical land of Oz. Once there he meets the mysterious witch Theodora (Mila Kunas) who lets him know of a prophecy that states that a magician will fall from the sky to save the people of the land from the evil Wicked Witch of the West. With the help a monkey sidekick (voiced by Zach Braff) he sets out to stop the bad witch and claim his throne.
Sam Raimi, once the low-budget director of cult horror franchise The Evil Dead who then went on to make the (mostly) celebrated Spider-Man trilogy before it was rebooted, clearly has a lot of love for both the original Wizard of Oz film and the L. Frank Baum source material. Here he achieves a nicely nostalgic tone that repeatedly and gracefully tips its hat to the original Oz we all know and love – the Munchkins and the Scarecrow are gleefully hinted without fully including them – while still being its own on-screen imagining of Baum’s original world.
While James Franco is admittedly a little out of his depth as the Wizard – one can’t help but imagine the more memorable portrayal that may have resulted had Robert Downey Jr. played him as originally planned – he nonetheless gets away with it because of his impish charm and the dialogue quips he gets to deliver.
Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams you can tell are all having a lot of fun chewing up the scenery as the three witches that the Wizard is caught between. The portrayal of the dreaded Wicked Witch of the West is entertaining and cleverly in keeping with the one we know; that distinct cackling laugh, for example, will have a ring of familiarity to most.
The film tends to sag in the middle as a result of an unnecessarily baggy runtime (it’s half an hour longer than the original) but that doesn’t last for long as it’s ultimately successful in delivering on its early promise. While it’s no instant classic – I don’t think it will have the staying power of the 1939 classic – it’s nevertheless a perfectly enjoyable family film with a gorgeous visual panache.
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