New Movie from OZZ

Their comes an new movie called Great And Powerful.Due homage is paid by presenting the initial 20 minutes in black-and-white and the old standard 1.33 Academy ratio. Instead of meeting an old charlatan, we encounter the fast-talking young Oscar Diggs (Franco) hustling both his customers and co-workers at the Baum Family Circus in 1905 Kansas. A lovely local girl (Michelle Williams) is clearly besotted with him, but he tells her to marry someone else, saying it's his ambition to be not a good man but a great one, like his heroes Harry Houdini and Thomas Edison.Very quickly, the disappointments begin accumulating. The tornado ride to Oz, far from being enhanced by modern special effects, amounts to nothing compared to the wondrous one offered to audiences 74 years ago. Instead of finding an equivalent to the great coup de cinema in the original of opening a black-and-white door onto a color world, in the new film color just innocuously seeps in once the imposter arrives in Oz (and he doesn't even get to land on a witch). Little about this Midwestern fraud could make even a child believe that he's a real wizard and, indeed, he disavows the role at first. But his arrival fulfills a local prophecy that a great wizard will arrive and liberate the population from the broom-riding old crone, and the promise of great riches inspires him to give it a try. The main story, then, becomes one of an unprepared man having greatness thrust upon him, a process fostered by his growing relationship with Glinda the Good Witch (Williams again). As before, some Kansas characters receive Oz-dwelling counterparts, so also joining in his quest are tiny flying monkey Finley (Zach Braff), his assistant at the circus, and a broken miniature China doll (Joey King), a girl in a wheelchair in Kansas. Unfortunately, these boringly one-note characters can't begin to compare with their equivalents in the original -- Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion -- so the burden rests entirely upon Franco and Williams, whose dialogue exchanges are repetitive and feel tentative.Among the main actors, Weisz gives it the best shot, and it's a fair bet she could have excelled with better lines and a tinge of camp -- an element the film is completely without and sorely misses (a contemporary Oz of one's dreams might have included Weisz and Penelope Cruz as witches directed by Pedro Almodovar). As her sister, Kunis never seems to get on the same wavelength; her character long remains in a sort of limbo, a status reflected in her uncertain performance. Williams introduces what little warmth there is here, while most of the supporting actors have been directed to express nothing but bland sincerity and hope with pleading eyes. There's neither subversive nor even a gleeful bone in this film's body, which means there can be no fun in the evil or in villains being vanquished. Similarly missing is any zest to the storytelling. Quite the opposite of the great earlier film, the Oz here is a dull place to be. Given the choice, you might even consider going back to Kansas.

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Tags:15-03-2013 donja01

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