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| "[It] ain't easy, but somebody's gotta do it" |
Sam Raimi's Wizard of Oz origin story may be about many things--the power of friendship, non-violent conflict resolution, the triumph of good over evil--but it's mostly about James Franco's Oscar Diggs, the eponymous Wizard, and his ability to charm every remotely attractive woman in the land of Oz.
First and foremost, Oz: The Great and Powerful is solidly entertaining, balancing just the right amount of razzle dazzle, heart, and humor to almost live up to the legacy of the 1939 original. From the opening frames, black and white with a 1.33:1 ratio, to the first panoramic views of pre-Dorothy Oz, widescreen and blinding color, Raimi does great things with the story of the once and future Wizard. Diggs is not a man who at all seems destined for greatness, no matter how much he wants it; he is, instead, a louse, a charlatan, and a scoundrel, traits that all, not so incidentally, align with the older Wizard. The new wrinkle to this character, one that I'm sure Franco was all to eager to play up, is the womanizer angle.
Despite all the marketing highlighting the three female leads (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams), it's almost a surprise that Diggs is such a ladies man, no less in a Disney blockbuster clearly targeted at females of all ages. This is not to say that Oz is a feminist nightmare or a misogynists dream; it's just such a killer, and frankly unexpected, angle that it becomes positively refreshing. How often, these days, do we get leads in tentpoles that are demonstrably, charmingly flawed, with the notable exception of Tony Stark (incidentally played by Robert Downey Jr. who was thisclose to playing Diggs). Franco does a superb job of playing Diggs, a sideshow magician and proto-Copperfield/Blaine/Angel, as the type conman who believes enough of his crap to be dangerous. He's also a bit of an ineffectual dolt, an angle that allows the female leads to dominate the film in ways that females rarely do in blockbusters.
Yet, for all the girl power on display, Oz is primarily a film about a man so enamored with his own myth that he practically wills it into actuality. On top of that, Diggs is a man whose mythmaking is fueled with an insatiable appetite for the ladies that he inadvertently--I hope--creates the engine of his "doom". This is played out with Mila Kunis' naive Theodora, a character who learns some very hard lessons about the callousness of charming men, a lesson that will be new to kids, the few who care, but painfully obvious and kind of humorous, in a skeevy way, to anyone over the age 16. The writing is on the wall as soon as Oscar and Theodora "dance" under the stars, a scene that kicks off the amazingly brash and consistent sexual innuendo that runs through the film in much the way double entendres were par for the course in classics like Breakfast at Tiffany's. With that masterstroke, Raimi does three things: he makes the female characters more vital to the narrative than they would be in a similar genre flick; he honors the charming, lighthearted, screwball style that was infectious to Golden Age cinema; and, he grabs the attention of adults in the audience who may have erroneously dismissed this fairly fantastic flick as kid's stuff.
Indeed, Oz the Great and Powerful is far from kid's stuff--the chuckles from the adults at every dirty-ish line that slides in beneath the radar are evidence of that--but it is still a fascinating and wondrous tale that hearkens back to an optimistic era where violence was not the sole source of conflict resolution in filmed narratives. It also recalls a time when Hollywood glamour meant something more than red carpet walks on Oscar night. Oz drips with the style and sensibilities of a bygone era, and it is better for it. i wish I could say I was surprised that Raimi pulled this off with such aplomb, but I'm not. He has shown audiences, since Evil Dead, that he has a deft grasp of genre and a true respect for the trappings of genre as well as a healthy respect for the classic notion of making films enjoyable and heartfelt, see Spider-Man 2, without delving into condescension and cynicism, something his contemporary, Tim Burton, could stand to remember. In fact, Burton and his much-maligned uber-blockbuster, Alice in Wonderland, will probably be on your mind as you leave the theater after seeing Oz because you'll be wondering will we see more of Raimi's Oz or Burton's Wonderland. Hopefully, we'll see more of the former and no more of the latter.
