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No, no, no! Cannoli Send a noteboard - 28/03/2013 02:43:22 AM

I saw this movie today, and the original over two decades ago along with numerous times when I was home sick with chicken pox at 16 and had to listen to my little brothers watching it twice a day for a whole week. I was not enamored of the film at the target age, and much less so after I inadvertently memorized most of the songs, and learned to associate the movie with a persistent itch all over my body. Maybe by not being a fan of the IP as well as disliking most of the leading actors, I missed something in this version, and thus took too analytical an eye into it, and rather than enchantment, I found plot holes out the wazoo.

  • People that Franco meets in Oz resemble people from back home? That was the inception-like twist of the original, to leave it up to the audience whether or not Dorothy dreamed the entire thing. But if Ozcar had the same experience... WTF IS GOING ON?!?! Is the old charlatan who convinces Dorothy to go back to Auntie Em through some clever cold reading and privacy violations, the older version of Ozcar? Why did he encounter a younger version of the villain inspired by Dorothy's subconscious hatred of Ms Gulch, noble crusader for leash laws? Does everyone in Oz have a doppleganger in the black & white world, like the Star Trek (and Darkwing Duck) mirror universes? If James Franco had stayed on the ground, would he eventually have run into his clone, Professor Marvel? Is anyone else interested in an alternate universe where that happened and they formed a faux teleportation act like Christian Bale in "The Prestige"? And maybe meet the Christian Bale twins when touring Europe and team up with Ozcar's hero Thomas Edison to take down Hugh Jackman, and his ally, Tesla?

  • While I attribute my reactions to not being a fan of the original WoO, I have to wonder how fans did feel about that, since by this movie, Dorothy's triumph is retconned into beating the most inept magical figure in the whole Land of Oz? Theodora is an utter moron, and the clownish appearance of Mila Kunis in witch-face doesn't help. Casting one of the most popular actresses of the moment might sell tickets (though the audience to which Kunis is usually marketed is unlikely to enjoy OtG&P except while stoned), but maybe it would be better to have cast someone who at least shared more than a race & gender with Margaret Hamilton! Mila Kunis' face is shaped almost completely opposite from Hamilton's, her voice is low & husky where Hamilton's was high and clear, and she's typecast as a perpetual teenager or love interest of man-children, rather than cackling evil types. When Kunis tries to imitate the Wicked Witch of the West, she sounds like Meg Griffin pitching a hissy fit. And before going green, she looks like a little girl playing dressup in Mommy's clothes, as well as having a wardrobe covering roughly 400 years of styles.

  • Rachel Weisz's Evadora, gets the lion's share of looks and brains in the family, and raise an important question: Why do two sisters have American and British accents? Maybe she was the same shoe size as Judy Garland, so slippers could plausibly teleport between their feet without alteration? It would make as much sense as any other casting motivation. It's not like she has any resemblance to Kunis or anything.

  • Everyone believes literally everything they are told in this film, until someone tells them different. Did they really need a con man to trick the Witches out of the Emerald City? Couldn't they just tell them the place as about to explode or something, and then lock the doors and put up a sign warning about anti-aircraft guns?

  • What was the point of the flying monkey pet? He did absolutely nothing. His strength was also rather inconsistent, as one minute he is staggering under the weight of carrying Ozcar's luggage while walking, and the next, he is carrying it effortlessly, while flying long distances. If it's that easy, why does he walk at all?

  • There is a whole village of china people and none of them have ever heard of the concept of glue? Really? How is life not a never-ending tragedy or irrevocable mutilation for them?

  • People of Oz are forbidden to kill. Wow. And, uh, why? How? By who? Is it some sort of innate compulsion like the First Law of Robotics? A religious taboo? A law? 'Cause if it's either of the latter two, that is kind of stupid. Even kids should grasp that much. I hardly think Luke Skywalker's massive bodycount was sanctioned by the existing lawful government in his theater of war.

  • Since he plainly had no idea how he got to Oz, how did Ozcar plan to take Dorothy home in the original film? Or did he intend to shiv her and toss her overboard while he went off to enjoy some smuggled-out wealth in another part of Oz? Or more sinisterly, did he figure out that she was the daughter of his hometown sweetheart and plan to follow up on that, Petyr Baelish/Sansa Stark fashion?

  • Given that Ozcar and Dorothy react almost the exact same way upon being introduced to their first witches, why is Oz lucky enough to have the term "stereotype" disappear from their lexicon, even while it appears to have migrated to ours?

  • And speaking of things that have disappeared, what happened to all the other (seemingly more numerous) inhabitants of the city we know as Munchkinland by Dorothy's day (the distinctive spiral paving that the idiot felt compelled to follow precisely rather than take a shortcut of stepping over like three rotations, was a dead giveaway)? Was there interracial violence which allowed Evadora to step in and take over the Munchkins who were all that remained after a pogrom?

  • If not for the tasty mozzarella sticks, and the theory I developed on the interim events between the two movies, this whole experience would have been a complete waste of time. I rate itTwoout ofTenshards of a China doll who ends up in a corner of the palace in the Emerald City when she inevitably has a falling out with the new ruler who maintains his reign by lies and deceptions leading inevitably to paranoia and turning on his four friends who are nowhere to be seen by the time of the original movie.

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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I thought 2/3 of the witches' were bland and the acting flat. - 21/03/2013 07:20:02 AM 427 Views
I'm a big Wizard of Oz fan, but I'll have to wait to see this. - 26/03/2013 11:18:23 AM 410 Views
No, no, no! - 28/03/2013 02:43:22 AM 499 Views
I enjoyed it. And I had almost no previous knowledge of Oz - 30/03/2013 11:06:50 PM 361 Views

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