When it comes to Oz: The Great & Powerful, your average child has some advantages over the average film buff:
Michelle Williams plays Glinda the Good Witch with mesmerising conviction
1) They’ve never seen Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz;
2) They have no sentimental attachment to Judy Garland over Michelle Williams and;
3) They don’t have it locked in their brains how the Oz story should go or believe that the 1939 movie classic is better than L. Frank Baum’s book or any of its numerous sequels.
Being a film buff himself, Sam Raimi does pay due reverence to the acclaimed movie, in this non-sequel Oz: The Great and Powerful but the script by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire artfully sidesteps comparisons. Film references are present: a rainbow here, a fleeting song there. The most direct reference to the 1939 film is the black and white beginning using a boxy aspect ratio reminiscent of early 1930s projection. And there’s no prizes for guessing that the film becomes a phantasmagoria when the action switches from 1905 Kansas to Oz. Interestingly, one of the 1939 film’s climactic surprises – the Wizard being just an old trickster hiding behind a curtain – is actually this film’s starting point. Except this Wizard (James Franco) is a handsome, horny young cad who can hardly wait to get adoring, female fans behind his curtain.
You won’t need to be Bruno Bettelheim to see that this modern fairy tale is about an immature man who needs to emotionally grow up. The Wizard’s romantic stock-in-trade is a music box with which he woos young women. Before the film leaves Kansas, he has already distributed two music boxes to steal 'the secrets" of young women’s unguarded hearts. Catapulted to Oz by a twister, the Wizard rapidly encounters not one but three beauteous witches, and starts right in with his music box schtick to seduce them too. At times this modern fairy tale seems to be a parody of Bill Clinton’s Administration (can the magic man keep his dick in his pants long enough to be a good President?). But going beyond political analogy, many a male will flinch when Witch Gilda describes the womanizing Wizard – as 'selfish", 'egotistical" and 'a fibber".
Franco keeps his scoundrel pleasant enough to allay doubt that a redemptive transformation will fail to occur. Both Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis are in touch with their demonic side, but all three play too much in the panto style. In contrast, Michelle Williams plays Glinda the Good Witch with mesmerising conviction. It’s no mean trick to play such purity so authentically – particularly while those around her can barely hold themselves back from winking to the camera.
On the directing side, Raimi keeps things whizzing around the screen (it is 3D after all) with characteristic finesse. But while Raimi is clearly having fun, the script is what makes this film work. Despite its subtext about male emotional immaturity, some will dismiss this Oz as 'you know"¦ for kids". But that’s what fairy tales are for: to lay out in advance the lessons that we’ll need to learn – and relearn – later on. And as Picasso said, 'it takes a long time to become young".
