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.

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.

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!!!

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

I have never, ever written a review for anything on the internet, but after watching this poor attempt of entertainment, I felt compelled to air my views. Never in my life have I watched such utter rubbish and desperately wanted to gain the three and a bit hours of my life back...until now. I really enjoy watching films about magic, witchcraft, and those that take inspiration from old classics, so I thought this would make for some interesting, easy viewing. I was so wrong. Where to begin???

I guess I can start with my main issue; the fact that all the way through, Dorothy made me cringe and almost retch. What a PATHETIC character. The child version of her made me so angry with how weepy and pathetic and wooden she was, that I thanked God she was only on for a few minutes as I might have actually killed myself. The adult Dorothy needed a slap and a personality. I thought the Walton's 'goody goody' attitude to life was vomit inducing...until now. Why cast an actress that can't speak with any feeling, or engage with other characters? Why cast an actress who can't show any expression in her face and who's voice can only just be detected before going off into decibels only dogs can hear? I hope the creators understand what they have done and what a BIG mistake they made in casting her. In fact none of the actors in this were particularly decent, bar Christopher Lloyd, who I suspect is suffering with losing shreds of dignity from being a part of this.

The effects, sorry, 'effects', were SHOCKING. Why even bother?!

The writing was unbelievably horrendous also...you know, the more I write/rant about this, the more I find things I hated about it and wonder what I was even thinking watching more than 5 minutes of it. Maybe I was naive enough to believe a promising premise might actually deliver, and that it would redeem itself. BUT NO. I could literally go on for pages with what I dislike about it but I'll try keep it short.

If you have a few hours and fancy catching a film, PLEASE don't choose this one. You will seriously regret it. It's not even so bad it's funny...!!!!