On the page (in the script from Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire), Franco's selfish, scheming womanizer provides an early glimpse of the famous fraud that Dorothy Gale and her posse of new pals will go on to expose. And it's all punctuated by a Danny Elfman score that serves as a reminder of how similar this effects-laden extravaganza is to the latter-day (and mediocre) work of Elfman's frequent collaborator, Tim Burton – specifically, 2010's "Alice in Wonderland," also from Disney.Īt its center is a miscast James Franco, co-star of Raimi's "Spider-Man" movies, as the circus huckster who becomes the reluctant Wizard of Oz. "Oz" features a couple of fun performances, a handful of witty lines, some clever details and spectacular costumes. The results are understandably inconsistent. He's done the lavish CGI thing before, with diminishing results, in the "Spider-Man" trilogy, but here he has the daunting task of doing so while mining an even more treasured pop -culture phenomenon. Director Sam Raimi also is trying to find his own balance here between creating a big-budget, 3-D blockbuster and placing his signature stamp of kitschy, darkly humorous horror. It never really accomplishes either successfully.Ī prequel to the groundbreaking 1939 film, "Oz" can be very pretty but also overlong and repetitive, with a plot that's more plodding that dazzling. "Oz the Great and Powerful" aims for nostalgia in older viewers who grew up on "The Wizard of Oz" and still hold the classic dear while simultaneously enchanting a newer, younger audience.
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