Reviews

A good artist knows the ins and outs of his genre and creates works that clearly belong with others of the same type. A great artist knows more than one genre, crosses their boundaries and unites things that aren't supposed to belong together, creating a new genre of his own. In this film, director Sidney Lumet - who has proved himself as a good director with his mastery of gritty realism - tries to cross those boundaries and unite his gritty style with the film musical. He pours his ingredients into the wicked witch's cauldron, mixes them together... and sadly creates a hotpot of sloppy seconds.

The first point of contention has to be the grossly mis-cast Diana Ross as Dorothy. I have read in various places that she gained the part from playing personal politics and schmoozing with the honchos at Universal. As this game has no honour whatsoever, I see no reason to be diplomatic when talking about how damn awful she was at this part. Not only was she too old to be a convincing Dorothy, but she just could not act to save herself. Her squealing ham of a performance does nothing for movie, and when the movie cuts to one of her "emotional" close-ups, you can just picture the few seconds beforehand when Lumet must have said, "OK, Diana, it's time to do your scared/sad/excited/confused face... ACTION!", and the camera proceeds to film a few seconds of overacting that could fit into a song about feelings by Barney the dinosaur. Granted, her singing in the movie is mature and soulful, but this only makes the acting seem even more awkward and out-of-place in comparison.

Combine this with Lumet's tendency to stage scenes with a master shot with so few cutaways, close-ups or focus on the finer details of choreography or design. Then notice a lack of flow from once scene to another, and everything seems so out of place that by the time the characters arrive at the Emerald City, it's VERY hard to be interested in the movie. The later highlights such as Mabel King's performance as Evillene and Lena Horne's performance as Glinda fade into the obscurity that the film has inflicted upon itself.

Michael Jackson and Nipsey Russell give credible performances as the Scarecrow and Tin Man. It's equally heartening to see Jackson in the days before he became a living tabloid headline/punchline and disturbing to think that while he shines in this role, his performance as a stumbling, confused character on a quest to find himself became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like or hate the music, but the material and the performances could have been much better served by a script that didn't scream out its point at every opportunity and direction that occasionally inter-cut some of the finer details with the 'big picture'

Before I say anything else, I must make it clear that this review is based on viewing the 90 minute movie version of this cartoon. Since the 'movie' was a splicing together of a series of 10-15 minute cartoons that I haven't seen since the late 1980s, my comments may or may not be truly judging this on its own merits.

The nature of the original cartoons perhaps gives the movie version its only real glaring weakness. Since everything was serialised and shown in short blocks, there's a lot that has to be crammed into each episode. So there we are left with Margot Kidder's narration (brilliant as it is - gotta love that woman) and the characters who have to scream out every single thing that they think and feel, and to state the obvious about what's going on. That said, I do believe that child and adult viewers do get to feel for the characters, and the voice artists have the right balance of quirkiness and compassion to be believable.

Sadly, as with most screen adaptations of the Oz stories, one of the most important layers of the stories is completely UNDER-stated. This is the quirky social commentary that peppers L Frank Baum's original stories. The real shame is that there are so many events in the cartoon that could use it so strongly. Lion's failure to live up to social perceptions of him, the main winged monkey having a surly New York accent, the crows who recommend to Scarecrow to "find a new line of work", the former mayor of the Winkies who is only safe from the witch because a mayor has no real powers to 'conquer and destroy', and (of course) the discovery that the wizard only has 'power' because the Ozfolk believe in him. I'm not saying that these messages should have been shouted from the Wizard's hot air balloon, but if there had been some effort to have characters respond to or comment on these elements, so much material could have been given extra special depth that wouldn't have detracted from the main focus.

The bottom line? It's maybe not the best Oz adaptation, but it's certainly not the worst. There's plenty of magic, plenty of passion, plenty of quirkiness to draw out the right emotions at the right times. It's also one of the Oz films that's more faithful to the original story despite the rapid jumps over certain parts of the story. If you're an Oz fan, check it out but be aware that it leans more towards sentiment than fantasy or comedy.

Rude, crude, amateurish, self-indulgent and just plain unfunny. When I first heard what these people were trying to do with this movie, I was confused. After reading the script and seeing the movie's description in Ralph magazine, I am even more confused. The storyline seems to be a joke that someone made over the breakfast table, and didn't realise it should have stayed there. For the little bit of "story" that is there, it does nothing but to string together jokes which are either weak or stolen from other places, sitting in sequence in a disjointed, incoherent manner. Thank heavens that this will never be seen in cinemas (and in my opinion should not even be on this site), and please, let us be spared of any other nonsense that these hacks try to impose on audiences

It's no real secret that through his writing, Steve Martin has depth and sentimentality that Hollywood doesn't always let him show. He has shown signs of a longing to grow old gracefully (as his almost gimmick-free gigs as Oscar host have shown) and let his acerbic wit and insight drive projects more than the over-the-top slapstick antics of the 1970s Steve Martin.

It's also no real secret that many of his recent films have been far from great.

So, still having faith in the man, and having loved the novel on which this film is based, I went in to the cinema desperately wanting to like it, but expecting to be disappointed. Largely, I was pleasantly surprised that the novel did transfer well to the screen.

Some of the credit for this belongs to director Anand Tucker, who has created some powerful images of the hustle and bustle of the LA that Martin describes in the novel, and contrasts it well with the characters who lead shallow lives, trying to be something meaningful amongst all the chaos.

Credit also goes to the actors who show that longing that drives the situation: Claire Daines as Mirabelle clearly WANTS to be social, artistic, loved; Jason Schwartzman as Jeremy WANTS to be sensitive, witty, lovable; Martin as Ray Porter clearly WANTS to be suave and considerate. Without having many jokes in the script, audiences can still appreciate the humour by seeing these pathetic struggles. When I saw it there was plenty of laughter at all the right moments.

I will, however, hasten to add that there are parts of the book that never would have translated well to the Hollywood screen, and the praise that some give the movie for serving its purpose will contain the same reasons that others wish to knock it. The book's strength is that one can feel for the characters because they are portrayed as superficial people and their lives and conversations are so shallow in comparison to the narrative that sets them up. The reasons why it works so well as a book could well be the very things that cause it to not work on the screen. Then there's the matter of a book that's so rooted in "LA sux" sentiment being made into a Hollywood movie. So maybe the musical overkill reeked of "excuse me, we're trying to tell you something". Maybe the spots of narration felt out of place and indicated that Martin is not yet over his desire to spend his life as the 'star' of his projects (him getting top billing for the movie was also a bit much, in my opinion).

Ultimately, maybe the audience members who were longing for a film with more 'depth' and 'substance' were in actuality sharing the characters' longings for the same in their own lives. Maybe the 'criticisms' are in fact backhanded compliments that the film is largely doing just what it's meant to do.