Le streghe di 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.

This is a review of the close to 3 hour miniseries and not the considerably shorter theatrical release. The Witches of Oz is written and directed by Leigh Scott, a man who cut his teeth working at The Asylum, and if you're familiar with their work then alarm bells should already be ringing. It sees an older Dorothy realising that the stories she writes of Oz are actually all true, and now the wicked witch is in our world to try and take over. AAAHHHH! This film is both ambitious and terrible for the most part. The first episode deals with painfully unfunny slapstick and cartoon caricatures. The second episode turned into an all out battle and tried to be a lot darker. The film has its ups and downs. The likes of Lloyd and Henriksen give great performances as they usually do, especially Hendrcksen who has a lot of experience in no budget territory. But we also have two Lord Of The Rings alumni trying hard not to die of embarrassment on screen. It's hard to tell with Astin and Boyd whether they are simply giving bad performances on purpose or if Jackson was just a much better director when dealing with actors. No doubt these two looked around the set and couldn't believe what their (I'm guessing by now, former) agents had gotten them into. Still, it's hard not to admire Scott's ambition and vision. He uses practical and computer effects well, and some of the designs are pretty cool, especially the Tin-Man. It obviously has designs on being a big epic fantasy, but it's impossible to take it seriously. I hear the hour shorter director's cut has better effects and is better concerning the pacing. There's certainly enough to make a child friendly kids TV special, maybe at the 70-80 minute mark, but I wouldn't sit through the whole thing again.

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

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.

Very entertaining. Good story line. If you want to be entertained and forget your watching a movie, then sit down and enjoy. The classic OZ is brought to current times. I'm not a big CLASSIC film guy but I figured since I was in the hotel w/ some time to kill I'd watch this "Witches of OZ thing". Since I knew the original story, it was nice to see familiar characters but NOT KNOW how this one was going to end. Plus, how can you not like a movie w/ Christopher Lloyd in it??? He's a classic guy and a classic actor and he does NOT disappoint. A great choice. I just wish that Glinda wore something sexier. What can I say. I liked it a lot!!!