I had kind of mixed expectations for this one, from watching the previews. It looked promising, but in recent year Franco's been in some pretty iffy films.
I'm glad to say that I found Oz to be pretty satisfying.
First, the scenery in the movie is outstanding. They did a good job of creating an essentially fantasy place, where the colors are so bright and full as to be almost too bright and full. In that sense, it was somewhat like the landscape in Avatar, though not as alien but maybe more dream-like.
And the plot had some clever twists and turns, which despite the overall basically normal plot line, gave it some good points of interest.
One review I read in a newspaper said that the actresses who played the witches didn't do that good of a job. Granted, this movie may not win them any awards, but I think a better way of looking at it was that they were more understated than mailing it in. And if you saw Hansel and Gretel, you may appreciate how not doing them the way that movie did may be considered a good thing.
And Franco was convincing as a small-time carnie trickster.
There are some things in it that could be questioned, though.
If you saw the Super Bowl a few weeks ago, you may well remember the auto commercial which featured Paul Harvey reading a bit of something about God making farmers, and the things they endure to do what they do. It's interesting, then, how Oz G&P kind of reverses that. Kansas, the land of good people who go to church and things like that, is depicted in a black and white, while Oz itself is a hyper-colorful fairy land. In other words, the world of farmers and good people is rather dull and dreary.
Maybe that wasn't the intended message, but that was how it seemed. I could be just reading more into it then what was meant to be there.
But outside of a bit of something like that, there wasn't really anything objectionable in it, and I enjoyed it pretty well. It may be one I'll see again in the next week or two, and one I can recommend to others.
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