Oz the Great and Powerful {Movie Review}

Like I said in my Jack the Giant Slayer review, fairytales are all the rage these days. I thought Jack the Giant Slayer was a fun ride but Oz was even better. It was hilarious, beautiful and magical. I loved it!

Unlike Jack the Giant Slayer, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Hansel and Gretel which are fairytale reimaginations, Oz is a prequel. It sticks to the premise of the original fairytale, The Wizard of Oz, but tells the story of what came before it.

You’re probably familiar with The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy, her dog Toto, a cyclone, Scarecrow, Tin man, Cowardly Lion, the wicked witch of the west, good witch Glinda, a wizard who rules the emerald city and who turns out to be a fraudulent wizard in the end. Oz gives us a background of how the wizard arrived in Oz and how he came to be the ruler of Emerald City.

It starts off in with a small time magician Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) in Kansas, in black and white, and changes to full technicolor after he, like Dorothy, gets swept up in a cyclone and lands in Oz. This technique is a nod to the famous 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

When he lands in Oz, he is greeted by a witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis), who gets excited when she finds out that his name is also Oz, the same as their land, because apparently there is a prophecy saying that a great wizard with the same name as their land would one day fall from the sky, be their ruler and save them all. Even though Oz knows that he is no wizard, he pretends that he is because he likes the idea of being a king.

So they walk to the emerald city and when he gets there, Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), the royal adviser, tells him that he can only become king after he defeats an evil witch. So he sets off to do just that, accompanied by a flying monkey named Finley and a girl made of China.

I won’t say what happens next because there are twists that I enjoyed because I knew nothing beforehand, and I want you to experience the same. But let me just say that you will get to see Glinda and the wicked witch of the west and even a bit of a munchkin musical.

I loved the cinematography and special effects, my friend kept gasping about how beautiful the Oz scenery was. Though James Franco could have acted better, he wasn’t too bad at portraying his role and was convincing as the douchebag that he is supposed to be, at least. Michelle Williams as Glinda and Rachel Weisz as Evanora were perfectly cast, but my favorite character was the flying monkey. He made me and the entire cinema laugh so hard several times!