Oh the Wizard of Oz.
That first story about the little Kansas girl and her dog being swept away to
a magical land has surely lasted the test of time. A completely American fairy
tale it’s been able to spawn so many books and adaptations. Last year we got
the live action prequel Oz the Great and
Powerful and this past season on TV with Once Upon A Time added the Wicked Witch of the West (don’t ask me
how that works with the Disney princess stuff). I guess with this whole
resurgence of interest in Oz someone decided they needed to also combine
with another trend of 3D CG animated family movies and that’s how we got Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return.
Now here’s the thing; this isn’t based on any of L. Frank
Baum’s many books that happen after The Wizard of Oz, it instead uses some out
of canon story by his great Grandson Roger Stanton Baum. Now I can’t say if
that book is good but I do notice that no one talks about many of the sequels
that aren’t considered canon and I don’t think many people will be talking
about the movie either. This movie is a mess and to be honest a lot of CG films
this year just haven’t been that good but this might be the worst one I’ve seen
all year. This film is completely forgettable and really uninteresting to look
at with some of the flattest 3D to be done in the cinema all year.
The story of the film is that in Oz time a few years have passed
and Oz has fallen prey to a new threat called the Jester, who is using the Wicked Witch of the West's broomstick and a magical Orb to terrorize all of Oz. The Jester also captures
all the leaders of Oz and turned them in marionettes. The Scarecrow, along with
his friends the Tin Man and the Courageous Lion, find a way to contact and bring
Dorothy back to Oz. For Dorothy the entire original adventure in Oz just happened
a day a go but once she returns to Oz she has to complete another journey and
make a new trio of friends to defeat this new magical bad guy.
Basically this whole story retreads the same type of journey seen in the classic 'Oz'. This time she meets a big,
really brainy Owl named Wiser who really has no confidence. Then a solider of
Candy County called Marshal Mallow who doesn’t know how to think for himself, and she meets
the China Doll Princess, who must learn to not be so demanding and mean, a tired old princess trope seen many times before. Then the last person they encounter is an
old talking tree who they turn into a boat called Tugg. The whole movie is 88
minutes of what feels like either a direct to DVD release bumped up to prime-time or three half an hour cartoons poorly tied together. Half the movie is
singing with songs that really don’t help or move the plot along at all. There
are points where you start to get into the story just a little bit before some
annoying song starts blaring out of the speakers leaving you asking why and
what’s happening. The vocal performances are decent with the singing all done very well since it’s by Broadway performers and people from Glee and Smash.
To what I said earlier the design of the movie is completely
uninteresting. Most of the character designs are pretty generic or coming from
old CG movies. Most of the lighting is very flat and the texture at time really
didn’t bring any depth or sense of believability to the world or characters. It
felt like watching in game cut scenes from launch era GameCube games. There was
one short scene that the crew did a fantastic job and it’s where Marshal Mallow
gets tricked into asking the China Doll Princess to marry him and even though
it’s short it’s the only time I sat there and was like wow these folks did a
bang up job making this. The 3D is also a waste if makes a lot of the film very
blurry and darker than normal for 3D movies and again nothing really pops out.
I took off my glasses a bunch of times while watching and it and I lost
nothing. The 3D actually makes Wiser look the worst since his edges of his
feathered body is always blurry.
