nineandthreequarters

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.