I was really looking forward to a darker reimagining of the Wizard of Oz.
The premise was interesting and on the whole the look was good. I kept an open mind and was willing to forgive a lot since it was just a miniseries & presumably doesn't have a large budget. However, overall, I was disappointed.
It started off OK, introducing the characters. I thought the casting was fine. Unlike apparently everyone else I had no problem with the lead actress and liked her non-hysterical approach to everything going on. I enjoyed the way they tried to modernize the story and yet keep basic elements (the Tin Man being heartless, scarecrow literally missing a brain). Small homages to the original were inserted (the blue gingham apron at the beginning, the brick road, the storm at the farmhouse, the Munchkins (who looked like turkeys to me) etc.) Monkey bat tattoos were an interesting twist and the monkey bat effects were done very well.
Unfortunately, the 'movie' just wasn't good enough. -I assume they didn't have a huge budget, so I tried to forgive the bad CGI and the film coloring "tricks" they used that looked like my amateur attempts in photoshop (look! we can do B&W w/ one color focus, look we can darken it to look creepy). -And some of the modernization attempts just didn't work for me. I couldn't figure out if O.Z. was supposed to evoke parallels like I'm a cutsey beach girl "dee-gee from the O.C." or if it was supposed to sound more hard & urban like "I'm D.G. from the O.Z, dog. word." -Why was it called "The Tin Man" if he was more of a supporting character to the DG/AZ storyline? -And maybe I've seen too many goth/Tim Burton things but "Az" was an incredibly boring, nonthreatening witch. Her attempts to be sexy bad witch was both uninteresting and trite. -However, the biggest problem was that the writing wasn't very good and it was too drawn out. -To top it off, the ending was painfully predictable and Disney-esquire in it's corny-ness and its literal embrace of the happy nuclear family.
This should have been condensed to a tighter 2-2.5 hour long movie and it would have been much better than an inferior drawn out 5-6 hour series (w/ all the commercials probably 4-5).
So I'll give them points for trying on a probably small budget, but next time it'd be nice to see a better effort.
The premise was interesting and on the whole the look was good. I kept an open mind and was willing to forgive a lot since it was just a miniseries & presumably doesn't have a large budget. However, overall, I was disappointed.
It started off OK, introducing the characters. I thought the casting was fine. Unlike apparently everyone else I had no problem with the lead actress and liked her non-hysterical approach to everything going on. I enjoyed the way they tried to modernize the story and yet keep basic elements (the Tin Man being heartless, scarecrow literally missing a brain). Small homages to the original were inserted (the blue gingham apron at the beginning, the brick road, the storm at the farmhouse, the Munchkins (who looked like turkeys to me) etc.) Monkey bat tattoos were an interesting twist and the monkey bat effects were done very well.
Unfortunately, the 'movie' just wasn't good enough. -I assume they didn't have a huge budget, so I tried to forgive the bad CGI and the film coloring "tricks" they used that looked like my amateur attempts in photoshop (look! we can do B&W w/ one color focus, look we can darken it to look creepy). -And some of the modernization attempts just didn't work for me. I couldn't figure out if O.Z. was supposed to evoke parallels like I'm a cutsey beach girl "dee-gee from the O.C." or if it was supposed to sound more hard & urban like "I'm D.G. from the O.Z, dog. word." -Why was it called "The Tin Man" if he was more of a supporting character to the DG/AZ storyline? -And maybe I've seen too many goth/Tim Burton things but "Az" was an incredibly boring, nonthreatening witch. Her attempts to be sexy bad witch was both uninteresting and trite. -However, the biggest problem was that the writing wasn't very good and it was too drawn out. -To top it off, the ending was painfully predictable and Disney-esquire in it's corny-ness and its literal embrace of the happy nuclear family.
This should have been condensed to a tighter 2-2.5 hour long movie and it would have been much better than an inferior drawn out 5-6 hour series (w/ all the commercials probably 4-5).
So I'll give them points for trying on a probably small budget, but next time it'd be nice to see a better effort.