Return to Oz

I just watched The Witches of Oz, the latest sequel to that beloved classic, The Wizard of Oz, and so, in light of increasing rumors about the upcoming big-screen prequel (which will tell the story about how the Wizard stumbled upon the magical land of Oz in the first place), this seems like a good time to review the various Oz sequels. If you count the various books, comics, and animated specials, these would number in the dozens, but this blog review will focus on three cinematic productions: Return to Oz, Tin Man, and The Witches of Oz.

The first of these, 1985's live-action (meaning, not animated) Disney film Return to Oz, is by far the best. It thrilled me when I was ten years old, and it entertains me just as much now. I'd even go so far as to say it's as close as we'll ever get to a film that is an equal to the 1939 original. Fairuza Balk -- so young she's almost unrecognizable -- plays Dorothy Gale very well, and the story, by Gill Dennis and director Walter Murch, is a load of fun.

The film takes place six months after the events of The Wizard of Oz. The Gale family is still recovering from the tornado's devestation, and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are concerned for Dorothy's sanity, due to her insistence that her trip to Oz was real, and not some dream concocted due to the bump on her noggin as depicted in the original film. To help her get better, they put her under the care of the well-meaning Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson), and his intimidating sidekick, Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh). Unfortunately for Dorothy, Dr. Worley prides himself on being on the cutting edge, and believes that the best treatment for her is electro-shock therapy. Terrified by both the details of her planned treatment and the creepy screaming of other asylum inmates, Dorothy flees the hospital in the middle of the night (her escape aided by the distraction of a terrible storm) and runs into the wilderness. Her escape leads her to a flooding river, where she is (improbably) reunited with her favorite farm animal, a hen named Belinda. Swept up by the raging river, Belinda and Dorothy cling to a piece of furniture floating by, and Dorothy somehow passes out -- only to wake up back in the Land of Oz.

Dorothy soon discovers that time passes at a very different rate in Oz (a very standard device in stories contrasting fantasy worlds with our world) and that, from Oz's perspective, years have gone by since her last visit. Oz is now in ruins, her old friends are nowhere to be found, and the kingdom is now ruled by the malevolent witch Mombi, who can disguise herself by switching heads with her victims. To bring Oz back to its former glory, Dorothy must once again team up with a group of sidekicks to defeat both Mombi and her ally, the Nome King.

The supporting characters are just great; I love the Gump, who is one part moose and one part couch (yes, you read that right), Jack Pumpkinhead, an admittedly Scarecrow-like best friend for Dorothy, and Tik-Tok, the mechanical man who is all that is left of Oz's once great army. The villains are equally well written, with Jean Marsh delighting in the over-the-top evil of Mombi (this movie's version of the Wicked Witch) and Nicol Williamson surprisingly gentle and reasonable as the alternately benevolent and malevolent Nome King. Put simply, the kid in me loves this movie.

Tin Man, produced by the Sci-Fi Channel in 2007, is basically The Wizard of Oz for the action-adventure crowd. The advertisements boast that it is not so much a sequel, as a "bold re-imagining" of the original. That it is.

This time, Dorothy -- here referred to as "D.G." -- is played by Zooey Deschanel. In this version, Dorothy is now an adult who has mostly lost her memories of her adventures in Oz. However, Oz -- here referred to as "the O.Z." (short for "Outer Zone") -- is, as in Return to Oz, now under the rule of an evil witch, this time named Azkedellia. When D.G. is again swept to the O.Z. by another tornado, her memories come flooding back to her, and she must again (surprise, surprise) team up with a group of sidekicks to defeat the witch.

Return to Oz may have been undeniably darker than The Wizard of Oz, but it was still clearly a children's movie. Not so with Tin Man, which substitutes the humor and music with stunts and action scenes. Dorothy's sidekicks, made to be cuddly and funny in the first two films, now have very serious back-stories: Glitch, the Scarecrow substitute played by Alan Cumming, is a former advisor to the Queen, who has now been banished. Raw, the seemingly cowardly lion played by Raoul Trujillo, is a psychic who is hunted down so that people can manipulate his psychic abilities for their own gain. And Wyatt Cain, the "tin man" (police detective, called a tin man because of his badge) played by Neal McDonough, has a back-story that is simply sadistic. I won't get into details here, but the writers really outdid themselves coming up with a cruel, cruel way for Azkedellia to have imprisoned him before he is rescued by D.G. And speaking of adult themes -- every time Azkedellia summons her evil, bat-like pets to hunt D.G. down, she does so by baring her cleavage, where picture of the mobats are tattooed onto her breasts! I'll say it again, this is not a children's version of the our beloved tale!

Incidentally, the writers do eventually reveal a chronological link between D.G.'s adventures here and Dorothy's adventures in The Wizard of Oz, establishing that D.G. is a descendant of the Dorothy from the original film. This seems a pointless contrivance that neither adds nor subtracts anything of substance to the film; you can miss this scene entirely, and still fairly interpret Tin Man as the "bold re-imagining" of the original that it's advertised as.

Finally, there's The Witches of Oz, which, like Tin Man, was originally made for television. Also like Tin Man, The Witches of Oz features an adult Dorothy who has forgotten all about her adventures in Oz. (Tin Man explained this as a result of a magic spell, while Witches explains that the memory loss is a result of the non-magical nature of our world.) This time around, Dorothy is a descendant of L. Frank Baum, and a struggling children's author -- the modern-day author of Baum's Oz books. The story is set in motion when Dorothy is contacted by Billie Westbrook, a publishing agent who wants to re-publish Dorothy's Oz books, and make a movie deal besides.

The fact that Billie is secretly the Wicked Witch of the West, and that Dorothy's best friend Allen is secretly the Scarecrow, isn't really a secret from the audience, as, despite the modernization of present-day Kansas and Manhattan, the actors play their roles as if studied from the handbooks of Margaret Hamilton and Ray Bolger. Once in Manhattan to etch out Billie's publication deal, it doesn't take long for Dorothy to meet characters who will clearly turn out to be stand-ins for the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. Yet despite the painfully obvious parallels, it seems to take forever to get to the fantasy elements of the story. The movie is 2 hours and 47 minutes long, which is at least -- at least -- 47 minutes too long. Being one step ahead of the characters isn't always bad for an audience, but here we're always at least three or four steps ahead of Dorothy, and it drives us mad waiting for her to realize what the heck is going on. It's not that she's depicted as dumb, it's just that the writers just take their sweet, sweet time getting us to where we know we're going. And along the way, before all hell (or more accurately, all Oz) breaks loose in mid-town Manhattan (the climax and the only fun part of the whole movie) it's just plain boring. Dorothy's a Kansas country girl in the big city, we get it. The writers don't seem to understand that we don't come to an Oz fantasy adventure for a lame fish-out-of-water story.

The Witches of Oz also suffers from truly uneven acting. As Dorothy, Paulie Rojas gives a one-note performance. She's "innocent." Yes, we get that. Does she have to read every line like a twelve year old girl? I wasn't that much more impressed with Ari Zigaris or Barry Ratcliffe, who play broad caricatures based on Ray Bolger and Bert Lahr's interpretations of the Scarecrow and the Lion. And as Billie/ the Witch, Eliza Swenson is entirely uneven. She's great when she gets to go over the top as the Witch, but as Billie, the Witch's human disguise, her performance is strictly junior high (though never as bland as Paulie Rojas's Dorothy). The biggest disappointment is Christopher Lloyd, normally one of my favorite actors of all time. Here, he seems to mostly sleepwalk through his relatively small role as the Wizard of Oz, really coming alive for only one scene. I was much more impressed with Lance Henriksen, who plays a world-weary but loving Uncle Henry. The guy plays so many cold or mean characters in his career, it's nice to see him play a heart-warming character, and Henriksen's performance as Uncle Henry is easily the best performance in the movie.

So, as far as recommendations go, here's my summary:

Return to Oz -- glowing recommendation, holds up to the original in terms of entertainment value and quality

Tin Man -- mixed review, but worth seeing once on a night when you've got nothing to do

The Witches of Oz -- not without its merits (a fun climax and Lance Henriksen's supporting performance), but ultimately not worth your time, due to slow pace, sub-par acting, and transparent story-telling

retro movie review: A Vampire in Brooklyn

The poster, and later the DVD cover, of Vampire in Brooklyn describes the film as "a comic tale of horror and seduction." That's actually a pretty good description of the movie's three agendas, and if asked whether Vampire in Brooklyn succeeds in meeting these agendas, I'd say, "two outta three ain't bad."

The story concerns Maximillian, a sophistocated, wealthy vampire from the Caribbean. He comes to Brooklyn, New York in search of a woman he believes is destined to be his bride, and finds her surprisingly quickly, in the form of Rita Veder, a detective with the N.Y.P.D. Naturally, Rita and her partner, the unsubtlely named "Detective Justice," are assigned to the case when Max's vampiric thirst leaves a trail of bodies in its wake. Meanwhile, Max (concealing from her that he's a vampire) romances Rita. It doesn't take long for the audience to figure out that Justice and Rita are already in love (in classic movie fashion, we figure this out long before the characters do) but Max is an expert at emotional manipulation, and he repeatedly arranges to appear as if he can offer Rita everything she's ever wanted. He also preys on her suspicions (which are based on a misunderstanding rather than fact) that Justice has slept with her roommate, making Justice an unviable rival for Rita's affections.

So there we have the horror and seduction, and for the most part, it works. But before I get into that comment in detail, let's explore the element that doesn't work, the comedy.

Max, you see, is played by Eddie Murphy. Murphy also co-wrote the screenplay with his comedian brother, Charlie. The Murphys can't help but pepper the film with comic relief characters who, for the most part, are simply unfunny. Specifically, there are three comical characters in the film: The most notable in terms of screen time is Max's comic sidekick, a bumbling young man named Julius Jones. Early in the film, Max turns Julius into an undead ghoul, and there's an unamusing running gag about how parts of Julius keep falling off at inopportune moments. Then there's Julius's landlord and uncle, Silas. John Witherspoon plays Silas exactly as he plays all of his characters, as a befuddled, cranky, dirty old man. Finally, there's a scene in which Eddie Murphy plays a Southern preacher. Murphy is good in the role, just as Kadeem Hardison and John Witherspoon are good in their comic roles, but they're all simply out of place in this film, and don't provide the laughs they're intended to.

That's partially because, with the exception of these three characters, Vampire in Brooklyn is played as a straight horror film. That may seem a surprise, considering who wrote it, but this is very much more of a Wes Craven film than an Eddie Murphy movie. Murphy and his producers basically hit the jack-pot when they managed to hire horror maestro Craven to direct this flick. I've often argued that horror, more than any other genre, is really a director's showcase, and Craven pulls out all the stops here. Vampire in Brooklyn is stylistic in all the best ways, as Craven's many flourishes add to the atmosphere and plot, rather than distract from them. Craven and Murphy later bad-mouthed Vampire in Brooklyn, and blamed each other for its failings, but let me tell you here and now, the faults lie with the comedy (Murphy's specialty) not the horror (where Craven, proven both here and elsewhere, clearly excels).

At this point, this is probably reading like a mixed review, and I guess it is, but don't let that distract you from my main point, which is that the movie focuses on the horror more than the comedy, and the horror works very well. By this, I don't mean that the movie is outright scary, but I'd argue that horror films, with some few exceptions, aren't really about the scares, they're about a sense of atmosphere and style. That goes doubly for vampire horror films, which tend to mix the dread with seduction and temptation. Vampires live eternally, and their love is often as deep as their life-span. Vampire in Brooklyn does much to explore this aspect of the vampire mythos, especially through the love triangle of Justice, Rita, and Max.

All three characters, by the way, benefit a great deal from the actors portraying them. Murphy made the film right when his career was in a downward spiral. (How bad was it for Murphy back then? When I saw this in the theater, there was only one other person there.) It's a shame this movie was overlooked, because Murphy's performance in this rare dramatic role is letter-perfect. He's matched by Angela Bassett, whose presence at the time was more of a box-office draw than Murphy (this being her first film after back-to-back Oscar nominations for major roles in Malcolm X and What's Love got to do With It?). Finally, there's Allen Payne, who never became a celebrity like his co-stars here, but who holds his own against their star power as Justice, the virtuous cop who may have kept his feelings for Rita secret a bit too long.

All in all, I'd say that Vampire in Brooklyn is a flawed but also highly enjoyable film. Watching it gives me a slighly greater admiration for Eddie Murphy as an actor (I say "slightly" only because I already admired him) and a continued appreciation for the directing talents of Wes Craven.