Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return

-Legends Of Oz: Dorothy's Return is the animated film based on the book Dorothy of OZ, which sees Dorothy return to Oz to help save it from The Jester. Along the way, she meets new friends and reunited with old friends.

-I'll be honest, the only reason I watched it was because I love Oz, but I actually was not disappointed.

-The story itself is a lot like the original. The ending doesn't matter as much as the journey. That said, many elements of the story, and overall film, feel really young. I know it's an animated film, but still.

-The pace is pretty good.

-The voice cast was good, but I loved Kelsey Grammar as Tin Man! -The characters are not that deep and have feel made towards younger audiences. The villain, Jester, was pretty funny. I hates Scarecrow though. He was the worst.

-The music was nice. There were some musical songs to it, which I really liked. However, there were only like 3 and they were not unified in style.

-I loved Oz. It was pretty and nostalgic! -It's PG.

-So Legends Of Oz: Dorothy's Return has some fun, entertaining elements mixed with some younger elements that are definitely for kids. I will say it's not a bad Nexflix/Redbox watch though. 7/10.

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.

I'm happy I took my 5 1/2 year old grandson to see this animated feature. It maintained his interest and when it was over he told me how much he liked it. He didn't rate the depth of the characters or the quality of the CG like a lot of adult reviewers have done. The movie was made for them of course. I did not read their reviews before I went to the theater and then was somewhat incensed afterward when I did. When it comes to "cartoons" let's wait for the kids votes to come in before we decide to bury someone's work. As an adult I've found the movie to be quite memorable. There are several segments that are very entertaining, heart warming, and exciting. Overall, Legend's of Oz is a fun movie. Take the kiddies and simply enjoy the show.

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.