Review: OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Doing a successful remake, a prequel, or trying to restart a series is no easy task. Sam Raimi, a talented filmmaker with creativity to spare, takes on the yellow brick road with "OZ, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL".



We are sure we are not the only ones who were waiting for months in advance to see the story of how 'The Wizard of Oz' made it to the wonderful land that bares his name; with a director like Raimi at the helm, we thought it was going to be another classic. And it surely had enough elements in place to achieve it.

James Franco plays the 'Wizard', and while at first its a bit hard to connect with him, the story progresses in such a way that we learn to understand him and care about his adventure.

In a very 'Wizard of Oz' fashion, the Wizard goes off into an adventure and along the way he finds curious creatures that will join him. If you want to know more about the characters, go see the film because we can't go through all of them or this review would be longer than a LOTR extended edition.

Technical aspects- Good effort in most areas except in the lighting department. Geez... they must have been rookies. We are not kidding, some sequences you wonder if they used blue-screen or just filmed the actors in their backyards and placed them in front of cgi-created landscapes. HORRIBLE JOB!

Oh, and before we forget- they invested millions on creating several completely CGI characters. Why, oh why, didn't they do that with the Wicked, Wicked Witch? The makeup department did the best they could, but it wasn't good enough.

A movie that at the very least had to be great and failed; it is barely above average.