The Witches of Oz

The Witches of Oz should had been an interesting and quirky reimagining of The Wizard of Oz story.

It is let down by some muddled storytelling, campy acting and not very good special effects.

Dorothy Gale is a children's author from Kansas. She gets an opportunity from an agent to travel to New York to develop her Oz stories for a movie.

However Dorothy finds out that the stories are based on truth. The events had happened and she and some of her companions had forgotten about their origins when they ended up in the real world.

So one of her friend is the strawman, the other is a lion and even a man of metal later turns up.

A wizard hid a magical word in a book. The word that unleashes huge powers. The book is locked and can only be opened with a very special key.

The wicked witch and Princess Langwidere are after a key that only Dorothy may know about.

This should had been an enjoyable reworking of the Oz books. Two actors from the Lord of the Rings films turn up to add to its fantasy credentials. However it was too long and too uneven. The bad outweighs the good.

The Witches of Oz – oh dear ! This is a Children's FILM. Some great favourite stars of mine in this, Christopher Lloyd, Jeffrey Combs, Noel Thurman, Lans Henriksen, and the gorgeous Eliza Swenson (aka Victoria Mazze) . If you're expecting a film with lots of modern effects as seen for example in "The Season of The Witch" (Nicolas Cage) then prepare to be disappointed. When fights happen, eg: Tin Man and baddie, no teeth are spat out, no bruises seen, no cuts, no grazes, nothing of this nature throughout the entire film. Not even from wand-plasma. The story is tied-in cleverly from the original, and the individual star actors acting is good as usual and expected, but somehow this film just doesn't gel. Doubtless kids will like it, esp girls I think. But I have to say that I observe that many computer games that children have seem to be more blood and gutsy. I enjoyed the modern "Alice in Wonderland" film much more. Not sure if it was an intentional plant but Christopher Lloyd is seen driving a Yellow Cab in this too. Shades of "Taxi" ? In the end what kept me watching was those beautiful big brown Mexican eyes on the pretty face of the lead Paulie Rojas (Dorothy Gale). In short it was a bit painful to sit through this LONG film, and pretty poor overall I would say.

To start things off, I was not expecting any kind of adaptation or even a re-imagining. Just something decent. I was also dubious though, considering The Witches of Oz was airing on the SyFy Channel, save a few exceptions, a lot of stuff on there is not bothering with in my view.

Thanks to costume and set design that is a notch above to most projects on the SyFy Channel and the appearance of Lance Henrikssen, The Witches of Oz could have been much worse. But in all honesty, is that saying much? Not for me.

Apparently there were over 1,400 visual effects. Okay, that is a sort of impressive number though I don't think The Witches of Oz needed that many. It wasn't the quantity of the effects I was looking to, it was the quality of them. While not as crude as some effects I seen compared to some of the other output that airs on the channel, the quality of the effects I don't think are that good, they are often lacking in clarity and sharpness.

The lighting doesn't help much either. Some scenes are dimly lit and make some of the production values seem flat. As for the story, I liked the idea and I admit I was kind of looking forward to what they were going to do with it, however it didn't engage me, I found The Witches of Oz rather sluggishly paced and also that some scenes dragged on for too long. The characters are not written very well at all, and I cared for very few of them, even Toto.

The writing is also stilted, often in a horrendous sense, the direction is perhaps too relaxed that it becomes rather dull and the acting ranges from overplayed to wooden. The worst offenders in both these categories in my opinion are Sean Astin, trying to give his material and bad material some life but ending up overdoing it quite wildly, and the girl who plays Dorothy, who is incredibly unanimated and wooden. Christopher Lloyd is also criminally underused.

Overall, didn't entirely hate it but it didn't do anything for me, sorry. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Rarely am I moved to write a review here, but this film is simply so execrable that I feel compelled to - especially as the star rating won't appear unless five more reviews are posted, and I feel a duty to my fellow film viewer to save them from this dross.

I am usually open to re-imaginings of classics, e.g. various versions of Alice In Wonderland and A Christmas Carol spring to mind, some more successful than others. I've even seen another re-imagining of Oz that was very different but still pretty good - Tin Man.

This? Awful. Acting either wooden or completely over the top, plot ludicrous and deathly dull. I am surprised and saddened that so many good actors agreed to stake part in this waste of celluloid. A couple of hours of my life that I'll never get back.

May well be the worst thing that has ever been on TV. Not a soul got the message that in this sort of fantasy everybody has to play it completely straight. They all pancake and smirk knowingly at the camera. They all overact like they were on some crappy Disney kids show. The effects are mostly non existent. When the witches are supposedly fighting the effects are mainly off screen while the actresses wave their arms about with no exertion or effort apparent. There is an awful moment where munchkins are sword fighting and three year olds in a playground would have been more convincing. Dorothy? Well she is so bad that you realise that the only thing that might save this is if she died a horrible death. Direction is appalling. And what dolt's idea was it to have the Lion and Scarecrow play their parts as a bad impression of the actors in the 1939 movie? And the pauses. You keep getting bits where some exposition that you spotted ten minutes ago has to be explained but instead of just getting to the point the scene drags on and on and on and.... You end up screaming at the TV 'Shut up, shut up. I was bored five minutes ago now I just want to die.' The only vaguely good idea is right at the end and they even manage to screw that up. I am only writing this review in the vain hope that it will have some sort of cathartic effect and wipe the memory of this dreadful waste of everyone's time from my mind. If you missed this then thank whatever God you have and take that as a sign that there truly is a merciful God. If not then avoid it like the plague.