'Why, it's a man!' It's Oz: The Great and Powerful - REVIEW

The ladies love their wizard (James Franco) in Oz: The Great and Powerful

BY NATHANIEL ROGERS 

You're basically asking for a trouble with that title, you know? OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict how this will turn out. If the movie is neither great nor powerful, tomatoes will be thrown. It feels weird to abbreviate the new picture as simply Oz, since it's a derivation rather than an original, so we'll call it Great and Powerful moving forward despite the misdirection. The filmmakers would approve since the movie begins with a clear and charming admission that James Franco's "Oscar Diggs" is no wizard at all but a travelling con-artist. So I come not to throw tomatoes (too easy), at least not at first, but to marvel at how red they are as they fly through the air.

The trailer brags that the movie comes from the producers of Tim Burton's Eyesore in Wonderland, a gargantuan box office success but one of the worst films of the new century, so there was cause to worry. Could any film be as simultaneously garish and muddy to look at? The happy answer is no.3D technology has come a long way and director Sam Raimi (most famous for the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies) has far more taste and control of his color palette than Burton has had recently. A

fter the movie's old fashioned title sequence and Kansas-set prologue, introducing us to Franco's womanizing wizard before he's whisked off to Oz (you know how), every color of the rainbow does make an appearance. They often share the frame but rather than a muddy color assault, the rainbow here behaves like a joyous community, intermingling peacefully and taking turns in the spotlight. In some small ways it's a worthy tribute to the joys of Golden Age Technicolor. That's especially true when the eye-popping color meets a great visual idea like the Wicked Witch's fiery silhouette (shadow play being a favorite tactic of Raimi's) or a terrific climactic image like the Wizard's pompous arrival in the Emerald City via clouds of colored smoke and cinematic projection. 

So, points for visual prowess but visual prowess ages rapidly in cinema. People don't still watch The Wizard of Oz seventy-four years later because the effects look cutting edge. They watch it for Judy Garland and those adorable Friends of Dorothy.

MORE, AFTER THE JUMP...

Justin Timberlake 'Stoked' That Gay People Can Marry in New York

In an interview about his new film Friends with Benefits, Justin Timberlake talks to The Advocate about the recent marriage equality decision in New York:

"I was stoked. I mean, I was stoked that that happened. I think it's just ... we're people and we're different, all of us. And we should be using our differences to bring ourselves closer together. You know? Not be afraid of something that we don't know. Like Mila said, and you know, I have a lot of guy friends who are gay. Two of my best friends are a couple, and my conversation with them is, like, it's unfortunate that things take a while to progress like this, but it was a great, great victory for equality. I’m proud that New York has balls to stand up for what’s right."

Mila Kunis has something to add:

"Listen, my roommate's gay. You're talking to somebody who grew up in Hollywood, so I don't know otherwise. So my stance on it is I think people are scared of what they don't know. A lot of times people don't understand something because they're not around it. The second that you show them, they become a little more accepting, and they're more open to evolving and moving forward. And I think it's great that there are people in this world who are willing to do something that should have been done, 40, 50, 60 years ago. I also think it's great that 'don't ask, don't tell' is over with. I think that a lot of things are moving in the right direction. And truly believe that in my lifetime gay marriage will be legalized [everywhere in this country]. I do. Like, federally legal. I do believe in that. I don't think it's going to be tomorrow. It's unfortunate that it's not, but if things keep moving in the direction that they are now, in 10, 20 years, yeah, I do believe it will be federally legal."