Movie Review: Oz the Great and Powerful

This past weekend, I saw Oz the Great and Powerful.

...Allow me to save you the $17 per IMAX ticket. 

WARNING: This post is one big spoiler.

The movie starts out in Kansas. James Franco Oz is con artist magician who works in one of those oddities-type traveling circuses. He's quite the ladies' man, which eventually leads to a sticky situation when another circus performer wants to beat his ass. Conveniently, there happens to be a hot air balloon nearby, and Oz jumps in and flies away to safety. The end.

Not really.

Of course, he gets stuck in a giant tornado. Oz pleads for his life and promises to be less of a conniving slimeball.

The balloon suddenly makes a safe landing!

But it's not in Kansas anymore.

I'd never noticed how similar-looking James Franco and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are. My eyeballs give them both two thumbs up.

Oz yells for help and out pops the gorgeous Mila Kunis, dressed like Puss N'Boots. She lets her hair down and even I fall in love with her. Mila goes all gaga for Oz and is all like "OMG, I love you." And then Oz is like "Uh. Yeah, me too." Mila believes Oz is THE OZ, as in the leader of their land, and takes him back to Emerald City to show off the newly-discovered prophet / love interest.

Mila: "Hold me." Oz: "Girl, I got things to do."

Mila's sister is the evil-yet-strikingly beautiful, Rachel Weisz and she's dressed like a cross between Ms. Scarlette and Mrs. Peacock, from Clue.

"Bitches better recognize." 

She totally plays on Mila's single-white-female feelings for Oz, and makes Mila feel like an asshole for falling in love with such a trickster. Rachel sends Oz out into the world to steal all the specialness from Glinda, AKA Michelle Williams, who Oz thinks is a bad witch, but is really a good witch.

"I'm so sweet and anglo-saxon looking. Poof!"

Glinda convinces Oz that she's good and begs for his help in defending the land of Oz from the raven-haired sisters. And due to some stupid "No killing" rule in the land of Oz, Oz (the magician, not the land) needs to come up with a way to basically make Mila and Rache shit themselves in terror and willfully retreat.

By this point, Mila's gone fucking insane with broken-hearted misery and her sister tricks her into biting a poison apple. The apple turns Mila into a wicked, old witch and then things get REALLY ugly because Mila's like "OH HAILS NO. I'M GOING TO WRECK SHOP ON OZ'S STUPID ASS."

Hell hath no fury like a single lady.

Glinda begs Oz for his help and he totally pulls through. With help from the villagers, he builds a giant projector, which will shine his face into the night sky and make Mila and Rachel run for the hills. The whole thing goes off without a hitch and Oz's face is seen floating in a cloud of smoke. Rachel tries to run away, but Glinda goes all girl-fight and rips her necklace off. Without the magical necklace, Rachel turns into a balding, haggard mess and looks like Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The sisters fly away, or something, I don't really even remember at this point because I thought the movie was a little boring. But Glinda is happy and Oz is happy and all of the hipster-extras who played villagers are happy and that's pretty much how it ends.


Did you see the movie? What did you think?