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" The latest attempt to make money from the Wizard of Oz came out this weekend, and like every example before it, Oz the Great and Powerful is dreadful. As The Atlantic pointed out in a neat summary of previous attempts, there has been a pretty much continuous sequence of Oz-themed movies since the original became the definitive smash of all time. None of the follow-ups should be taken as a verdict on the Oz story \u2014 they never come close to the glory of the original, mostly parodying and insulting it. The Wizard of Oz is really the urtext of color movies \u2014 the original testament and celebration of their unique capacity for illusion. The sequels and reimaginings are really periodic tests of the faith in movies&amp;#039; power of illusion. And right now, if Oz the Great and Powerful is any guide, Hollywood is lost and desperate about its illusive power despite the fact that it has never had more technical ability to create collective dreams. The story of Oz the Great and Powerful is a prequel, following a conman and carnival magician from Kansas, named Oscar, who is carried away on a tornado, and becomes, after various more or less insignificant episodes, the Wizard of Oz. In the final struggle, Oscar, literally calling on the memory of Thomas Edison, uses cinematographic illusion to help rescue the munchkins and various assorted others from the clutches of two wicked witches. Sam Raimi, the director of Oz the Great and Powerful, ends up much like the Wizard himself insofar as he has this capacity for illusion but he can&amp;#039;t figure out what to use it for. All he can do is dream up sentimental fantasies \u2014 cheap little stories of virtually no value, the shallowest possible articulation of good and evil, broken girls who need to be healed, monkeys who want friends, etc., etc. We&amp;#039;ve seen this time and again in 3-D movies, of course. The first one to add these grotesquely inconsequential plot lines to a 3-D version of a children&amp;#039;s story was Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton slapped on a bunch of moralistic, Harry Potter nonsense that allowed him to have a battle sequence in the end. More recently, Jack the Giant Slayer does the same thing. And The Hobbit. Each of them harnesses 3-D and all its power in the service of a banal, boring, ridiculously simplistic story. Each of them reeks of focus groups and testing and discussions about theme-park approval. Each of them reeks of men and women who have no faith in their ability to judge what a good story is and want accountants to tell them. Going to a movie and saying that it&amp;#039;s not as good as The WIzard of Oz is like going to a theater and complaining that the play isn&amp;#039;t Hamlet. But in the case of Oz the Great and Powerful, the comparison is invited and particularly damning. What is so amazing about the original, and so lacking in its prequel, is the incredible faith in the power of illusion it possesses. Its creators, who spent an unprecedented six months and three million dollars making it, had the faith that moves mountains. They believed that technicolor, in all its splendor, could capture the simple power of a girl in Kansas having a dream. This is both very humble and overweeningly self-confident. They didn&amp;#039;t feel they were any better than that Kansas girl and her dreams, but they also felt that they were worthy of that simple dream, and that they could give that dream the maximum possible expression, that they could transform it into &amp;quot;somewhere over the rainbow.&amp;quot; They had another faith in illusion, too \u2014 they believed that the act of illusion was in itself redemptive, that it transformed Kansas into a better and fuller place on return. This is one of the many meanings to &amp;quot;there&amp;#039;s no place like home.&amp;quot; This faith in illusion is completely lost in Hollywood of the moment. Not that great movies aren&amp;#039;t being made; far from it, but they specialize in disillusionment. Zero Dark Thirty uses the latest filmmaking techniques to bring the harsh realities of American foreign policy to light. Argo, though it was completely full of it, began with a rather precise description of Iranian policy. The best 3-D movie, so far, is probably Hugo, a film that looks behind the screen at the failure of illusion to redeem one man. Contemporary films can be virtuous, but they cannot be innocent. Oz the Great and Powerful is a lousy movie, but a movie whose lousiness is revealing. We live in a world with a greater capacity for illusion than ever before but no faith in the activity itself \u2014 a painful predicament which will no doubt lead to a bunch more bad, expensive movies. It must be said that Oz the Great and Powerful looks amazing. Once again, the 3-D effects are stunning. I don&amp;#039;t seem to tire of them. But the effects go to serve a story I couldn&amp;#039;t care less about in a film which is hollow as a bell. I hope this isn&amp;#039;t a requirement of the genre: Can anybody make a 3-D movie that wouldn&amp;#039;t be improved by seeing it high? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a20465/oz-the-great-and-powerful-review-15202623/?click=esq_more>