Il magico mondo di Oz

I'm a parent who has 3 animated movies in his top 10 favorite movies of all time (Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph & Incredibles) so I'm a good candidate to review this film objectively.

I took my 8 yr old son and 9 yr old daughter to see it. Final analysis?

Me & my son: It was o.k. My daughter: I liked it a lot!

I think most kids will enjoy this movie a lot. I was moderately entertained, which is more than I can say for a lot of the animated drivel that passes through our theater. I give it a 6 out of 10. It certainly doesn't deserve to bomb at the box office. I thought it was better than mindless sequels like Rio 2 or even Despicable Me 2, which I didn't enjoy much. But here's a full breakdown of my review:

VOICE ACTING 8/10: Martin Short was outstanding, and raises the score here. Kelsey Grammar was also very good. I love Dan Akroyd, but his portrayal of Scarecrow left a lot to be desired. Jim Belushi and Lea Michele were adequate in their roles, if not rather forgettable.

ANIMATION 6/10: The animation definitely has a sub-par appearance compared to large studio productions (such as Disney or Pixar) but it isn't anywhere near direct to DVD levels. I could tell the animators put their heart and soul into this film, they just didn't have the tools to make it look amazing. Dorothy's animation is a distraction, but many of the non-human characters were great. There was a lot of attention to detail but, unfortunately, the movie suffers from its low budget appearance. People do judge a movie by its cover and it suffers here.

PLOT/STORY 5/10: There's nothing new or interesting about this story. It progressed from point A to point B without any real surprises or a sense of what was propelling the characters forward.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT 5/10: The villain was the best part of this film. Excellently portrayed by Martin Short, he was a lot of fun to watch. Dorothy and most of her companions were pretty flat and uninteresting. Marshall Mallow was interesting but his relationship to his love interest seemed forced and a little contrived.

MUSIC/SONGS 6/10: The songs were technically proficient and had a professional feel to their production. Unfortunately, they were also rather uninspiring and not very catchy. There's no way anyone would be able to hum or sing any of those songs after just one viewing, as one "reviewer" claimed, they were just too unremarkable.

I find it hard to trust the 1st dozen or so reviews on some films found at this sight. Of course I could be mistaken but, I saw this film and found it to be full of nonsense and trite cliché dialog. With the mega cast that participated in the making of this film I expected a much better and more interesting story to be explored in this sequel classic.

As I watched the various characters enter the beginning scenes I felt they were very cardboard like. The few comedic scenes seemed almost too childish even for children. As to the animation, it was not to my liking. It seemed that it was taken from generic Saturday morning cartoons. It was bland and even boring to a degree.

Lastly I noticed that production costs of this animated film were surprisingly much more than I expected it to be. Nearly a million bucks a minute. I felt that for that kind of mega bucks this should have been a higher quality of product. The next few weeks will show weather the movie goers buy and or embrace this less than stellar movie.

Not every children's Animated film can be a "Frozen" or a "Finding Nemo" but they should at least aim for that quality and level of product.

I really dislike this movie. It was one of the rare times when I went to see a movie and had low expectations for it and I left the movie with an even lower opinion of it.

In the movie, Dorthy comes back to Oz to rescue her old friends from a new villain with the help of some new friends, but the new friends are not as good as the Scarecrow, the Tin man, and the Lion. they had no depth to them and their purpose was weak.

This may have not been a big deal if Dorthy, the main character, wasn't so one-dimensional.

The new villain, the Jester had potential, but falls short. I think it had a lot to do with the character design overall, which tried to be creative but had no feel to it. Very strange, it was like the artist were not communicating with the animators

I did not like the animation. I thought it was not smooth enough for a movie being released in theaters.

I guess the movie got the released because of all the names attached to the project. The movie was able to use the success of Glee's Lea Michelle who played Dorothy to get it out their. I recognized the voices of Dan Aykroyd and Martian Short, but the voice talent that made no sense was Patrick Stewart, who I feel had better things to do than this movie.

In a world with plenty of Wizard of Oz Sequel, Prequels, and spin-off this was by far the worse. You and your kids have better things to do.

I have to say...When I told my daughter we are Going to the movies..I wanted to take her to see Rio 2, but she said She'd rather watch Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return. I thought i was gonna be In for an hour&a half of boredom and a terrible Computer-Animated Wizard of Oz Movie..but luckily, my daughter made a good choice. When we Entered the movie, we realized nobody else was there, (Not surprising) and that made the kiddo so excited bc She could talk when she wanted to and walk around..This Film kept her interested, and she had a big smile on her face The whole time. It kept a pretty decent pace, had lots Of good action sequences & The animation was Actually much better than I thought it would be, looked somewhat Realistic. Also had a few good laughs&she loved the Musical scenes. I'm a 31 yr old guy..so obviously this Isn't my kind of film..i love computer animated Kids movies but this one doesn't aim any over the head Jokes for adults and comes off as corny to an adult.. but since my Lil one had such a great time, it's a good one. I recommend this as a movie for a family w small children to Watch together or for ages 3+ to watch alone(the action & bad guys May be too intense for some younger kids to watch alone. Overall, much more enjoyable than expected. -Ghandi Bonez

Going into "Legends of OZ", my expectations were already quite low due to a lot of negative reaction from critics and Oz fans. Having now seen the film, I was pleasantly surprised by some of it. I found the writing and concept of the film to be quite good. The film managed to be funny when it needed to be and was even able to pull off a few heartfelt moments. The cast of new characters who become Dorothy's traveling companions, as well as the new villain, all were able to hold my attention and deserve their place in the Oz canon. All the vocal talents in the film, particularly Martin Short & Megan Hilty, are pretty much spot-on with their interpretations of the characters in Oz, even the iconic ones we've come to know and love. The design of Oz and its inhabitants, while not particularly revolutionary, was sufficient and "magical" enough to not be distracting. Unfortunately, once those designs begin to move (as this IS a "motion picture") the film begins to run into problems. Some of the animation, especially in the Kansas scenes at the beginning and end of the film, are on par with the old Sims computer game renderings, which were impressive for their time, but CGI has moved FAR beyond that. But the biggest misstep of all is the original music written to make the film a "musical". The concept, production, and placement of these songs are so bad that they almost felt like an afterthought. I expected Bryan Adams to deliver something much better than the finished product and was quite disappointed. The only saving grace on the soundtrack is "Even Then"....which "even then" had terrible moments of mediocrity. Perhaps Bryan Adams just isn't capable of delivering that twinkly, magical, Disney-ish feeling music ala "Frozen" that (in my opinion) was needed for a film like this. As the title summary states, its a mixed bag, but still at least somewhat enjoyable for fans of the original and of L. Frank Baum's novels.