It Ain't Easy Being Green

     I'm not a great fan of 3D.  It mostly stands to distract from the fact that there's no story whatsoever (Hello, Avatar!), or it's so invasive that your eyes cross and you forget you're supposed to be enjoying this.  That being said, I actually broke down and paid (okay, I had a gift card) for the 3D version of Oz the Great and Powerful, and I have to say it was well worth the price.

     The movie's just, well, beautiful.  It's bright and colorful and you can really tell how much time and effort was put into the little details.  The movie copies Wizard of Oz where it starts out as black and white and the dimensions of the screen are small, and goes to color and stretches out when the action reverts to Oz.  Items are flying off the screen and stretch out of the boundaries of the screen.  There's one scene with a field of sunflowers that I can honestly say was one the most beautiful things I've seen onscreen.    The credits at the beginning of the film were almost worth the price of admission.  It's luscious, and whatever money was spent on the film actually shows up onscreen.

     Unfortunately, that didn't leave a whole lot of money for the script.  There was more of a story than I honestly expected, but it's still pretty thin.  I did appreciate the fact that they used a good deal of L Frank Baum's story in the onscreen tale, but a lot was underused.  But I have to say that I wasn't that upset, mostly because my expectations were low for story anyway, so win!

     As for the performances, James Franco can alternately irritate or delight me in some of his past roles (Hey James, General Hospital sucked already.  No need to add your special brand of cray-cray to make it worse.), but he usually will give something worth seeing.  The character is set up as a charlatan, liar, and womanizer who gets redeemed, and Franco's got the charm to pull it off, but I never stopped thinking of Oz as kind of an ass.  I read that Robert Downey Jr had this role and dropped out, and I can't help but to think he would have kicked it sideways.  But hey, Franco will do in a pinch.  The three ladies do a good job.  Their characters aren't very fleshed out, but at least they had the wherewithall to get good actresses to do the best job they could with what they had.

     Overall, it's well worth seeing just for the techinical artistry.  You won't be disappointed for that.  Just don't expect much else.