So, I've skipped the once a week movies for a while... to the extent that I totally missed Jack the Giant Slayer, which I had been looking forward to for quite a while. I guess that's what happens when midterms and aquariums take over your life. In any case, the last movie I went to see was Oz the Great and Powerful.
I'm not even a fan of the Wizard of Oz, and I was disappointed. The movie couldn't decide whether to take itself seriously or not. Oz was a womanizing magician, dissatisfied with his life spent in a small-time traveling circus. His character came off as flat and unchanging, which was a real problem for a movie plot that depended on the personality evolutions of Oz and the witch who became the Wicked Witch of the West. (The Witch was slightly better about showing character change.... but that's not saying much.)
Okay, so not enough depth, but it's got great music since it's the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, right? Sorry, strike two! There was one musical number but the Munchkins that Glinda cut off because she found it annoying. And the rest of the music in the movie was less than memorable, at best.
So, it won't win an Academy Award for Best Song, but it's Disney, so the visuals and CGI must be AWESOME, right? Strike three. The illuminating moment where Oz first encounters the magical, mystical, musical land of Oz fell flat because of fake-looking, overly cartoon-y scenery. At least Theodora seemed to fit in slightly better. When the movie had actual sets instead of relying on CGI, they looked pretty good. Case in point: in a trip to "Chinatown," a town made of china tea sets, the characters looked awkward and out of place (ironically, this includes the CGI monkey), but when Oz enters a tiny china abode, the set looked much better put-together. This is where Oz meets one of the major characters of the movie, which is a china doll (the China Girl -- smh) whose facial animations are actually rather good. Too bad the producers couldn't pony up for a motion-capture doll to use for filming the live actors with the China Girl because every time Oz or Glinda went to pick up the China Girl, she didn't "fit" right -- the actors had no idea how to hold their hands properly around the China Girl. Still more problematic is that the visuals were inconsistent: the overly bright cartoon-y introduction to Oz was quite a different style from the outside shots outside of Glinda's castle. If only the art director(s) could have (a) picked a style for Oz and stuck with it and (b) done as good a job with the rest of the visuals as they did with the facial animations of the China Girl and the Flying Monkey. Yes, there is a friendly flying monkey. It's the baboons you have to watch out for.
Bottom line: the flying monkey is the best part of the movie.
Hopefully, I can pick up the torch again this weekend or early next week with The Host, which is one of my favorite books to read when I'm feeling reclusive and emo.
