OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Walt Disney Pictures

Rated PG

Running time: 130 Minutes




Click below to watch the Oz the Great and Powerful trailer.




In Walt Disney Pictures Oz the Great and Powerful, James Franco is Oz, a con artist carnival magician who gets caught up in a twister - and winds up in the Land of Oz.

Based on the works of L. Frank Baum and directed by Sam Raimi with music from Danny Elfman, this is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz from 1939 as elements from The Wizard of Oz is explained in Oz the Great and Powerful. Like The Wizard of Oz, at the beginning of the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, the movie starts out in black and white when it is set in Kansas - and turns into color when Franco/Oz arrives at the land of Oz. The aspect ratio of the movie also changes to the wider widescreen format and goes from monaural sound to surround sound when the movie is in the Land of Oz. And just like the original The Wizard of Oz, several characters from the black and white Kansas play characters in the land of Oz, such as Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, and Joey King.

After an unsuccessful magic show in a traveling circus, Franco/Oz gets caught in a twister while riding in a hot air balloon. When he arrives in the Land of Oz, Franco/Oz gets mistaken to be the Wizard that was described in prophecy. Franco/Oz soon gets recruited to save the Land of Oz from the wicked witch who had killed the king of Oz.

I liked the fact that the opening credits were created more like practical credits in line with the time of the movie instead of CGI credits and that practical sets were mostly used in the film. Elfman's music gives the movie a classic Hollywood movie feel to the movie. The song Almost Home from Mariah Carey is used during the end credits of the movie and is the only contemporary song in the movie. This is not a musical with characters breaking into song like in the original Wizard of Oz or as Disney musical animated fairy tale films tend to do.

While it has been years since I have read Baum's Oz series, and I have never seen the theater musical play Wicked, this felt like a true prequel to the movie The Wizard of Oz as we got to know much more of the characters from the original The Wizard of Oz movie. The story is such a tragedy, but the movie does set up the events to The Wizard of Oz movie that is set 20 years later.

I felt that Franco/Oz's relationships with the women in the beginning of the movie were a little too long to get to the story - but when Franco/Oz first arrives in the Land of Oz, it feels like riding in an attraction at Disneyland, which is quite appropriate as the movie was produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Disney had been trying to produce a film based on the Baum's Oz books since the late 1930's. Producer Joe Roth was happy to finally have a fairy tale with a male protagonist, such as the male protagonist in the origin story of Oz the Great and Powerful. Franco/Oz's desire to be a great man, obviously leads to him becoming Oz the Great and Powerful. Franco received magical training with magician Lance Burton in preparation for the role of a magician in this film. Franco and Braff reminded me of Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. In fact, I could see Broderick and Lane doing their roles.

The twister was much more intense and violent than the twister in The Wizard of Oz. It was more like the movie Twister than the sanitized fantasy version that was shown in The Wizard of Oz. In fact there were several times that I expected Franco/Oz to be seriously injured during the various episodes of the movie.

I saw the movie in regular 2-D, but the movie was obviously designed as a 3-D movie. The movie does have some scary scenes that Raimi had to edit down to get a PG rating, which is Raimi's first PG film. For those of us who were scared as children from the original The Wizard of Oz, Oz the Great and Powerful is a scarier movie for children - especially the flying baboons. I am sure the movie is even scarier in 3-D.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 130 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.
 

Real Steel

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 127 Minutes

















Click below to watch the Real Steel trailer.



Set in the near future, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Real Steel has down on his luck ex-boxer Hugh Jackman using the last of his money getting fighting gigs for his second-hand robot boxers - which gets trashed. When Jackson gets temporary custody of his orphaned son Dakota Goyo, Jackson reluctantly uses Goyo's boxing robot to earn more cash as he travels from city to city searching for his next boxing match.

Because the money went from human boxers to robot boxers for more violence, Jackman searches for parts to make another robot in a junkyard. After inadvertently saving Goyo's life in the junkyard, Goyo scavenges the remains of the small sparring robot Atom, that saved Goyo's life, from the junkyard. When Jackman's former girlfriend Evangeline Lilly overhauls Atom for Goyo, Goyo soon persuades Jackman to coordinate Atom's boxing skills. Built to take punches, Atom soon goes up the ranks of both the underground robot league and the World Robot League.

This movie is basically The Champ with robots. Or to get a better picture, it is The Champ, Rocky, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and Robocop - without the criminal violence. This is basically a remake of The Twilight Zone's episode Steel, adapted from the 1956 short story by Richard Matheson. With Goyo in the film, it is a very cute human film - but very predictable. As Jackman's son, Goyo holds his own against Jackman.

The filmmakers wanted to make this movie in the "near future." Because this is a "science fiction" film, the opening shots can be confusing as it is set in a normal-looking Mid-West. You might think you are in the wrong theater - or rented the wrong movie - if you have not seen the movie before, because the filmmakers wanted the movie to be very familiar to the audience. The film being familiar is also evidenced by the various product placements, including Hewlett Packard and ESPN.

The robot boxing fights were motion-captured from professional boxers - who were supervised by world boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard. Leonard's training also made Jackman's boxing performance believable. A part of the boxing scenes is like a computerized version of the old toy "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots" by Marx/Mattel. The Rocky movies have a big influence on the film, with the final fight scene basically being a blow-by-blow scene from Rocky IV. The operatic championship music was by composer Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo fame.

Rated PG-13 for language and violence. Running time 127 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.