Posted on 12/25/2009 9:18:43 PM PST by Silly
Following is my tongue-in-cheek review of "The Wizard of Oz" which I posted on Amazon in 2003. It's gone unnoticed until late this year. Customer comments follow.
THE WIZARD OF OZ
"Troublesome film marred by vague subject matter", by A Customer
This film is troublesome on too many counts to list here but I will try.
First, the story is implausible. Oz is not the sort of place children dream of, usually they dream of running or flying or getting lost. The "Oz" story was already a tired conventional hackneyed subject and should never have been filmed in the first place.
Also the color -- what is this fixation on color in that period? Tone things down, please.
The characters are argumentative and malicious, bogged down in their own fantasies and "needs". No child is going to relate to a woodsman, let alone a woodsman who has had limbs cut off one by one and replaced by tin. (By the way, I never once believed he was made of tin.)
When singing is employed in film, it should be in the background; the characters should not be lipsyncing to the music unless there is a radio playing in the background.
The concept of a "straw man" refers to a malignant red herring thrown into an argument to confuse the debate. Children are not going to pick up on this, and those that do are too intelligent to be watching movies like this.
The fixation with Judy Garland -- why? Plain, too fat, simpering and controversial. She had -- too put it mildly -- a bawdy life as a teenager, and was held high as a role model until the Troubles began. If children read her life's story, their blood would curdle. Who needs that?
When I see a movie, I do not expect technical perfection -- I can suspend a little disbelief and overlook wires from flying monkeys and such. Too much attention to this was given in building the sets and in the camera work. Money would have been much better spent on better actors. And what was with all those directors?! No wonder this movie looked like it was filmed by a committee.
Making fun of little people? I DON'T THINK SO!
I could go on and on.
5 of 103 people found this review helpful
Card Recipient says:
So...when do YOU think hollywood should have added color to films? the 1990s? Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urband Legend would have looked AWFUL in black and white!!!
P. Arnold says:
This reviewer sounds like a pseudo-intellectual to me. None of it makes a damn bit of sense! Thank God he or she didn't go on and on!
Well I think you review is very clever. I have enjoyed a LOT of movies that got bad reviews. “Waterworld” comes to mind.
I like your nod to the cinema verite’ purists:
>When singing is employed in film, it should be in the background; the characters should not be lipsyncing to the music unless there is a radio playing in the background.
What about that allegory comparing the yellow brick road to the gold standard, and the Wizard to William Jennings Bryan, and the tin man to the labor, and the straw man to the farmer...it turned out to be false...L. Frank Baum was a pro-gold standard Republican after all.
You forgot to mention how Glinda and the Wicked Witch are the earliest cinematic illustration of Jung’s “shadow” concept (a Freud reference would spill the beans, but the Jung reference will catch ‘em unprepared).
It is truly uncanny.
All four of you have hilarious comments and you should post them at the Amazon thread with the same deadpan quality as you post them here! LOL!
Very clever.
I have now posted replies to both of these confounded souls. I hope they’re tracking replies and will take my bait!
≤}B^)
Just that, say nothing else.
Here’s what I posted to your review:
“Excellent review! Seriously...Judy Garland, what a terrible pick to act in this movie. Role model indeed! It is overly long, overly violent (house landing on a person?), ridiculous in its portrayals, weak in its allegory. How did this become popular? Lip-syncing midgets? Seriously? Cowardly lions? Preposterous. It was just a guy in a lion suit. Don’t get me started on the special effects. If you aren’t going to do effects right, don’t do them at all! Overall, you are correct in your estimation of this piece of garbage, waste of cellophane. Good review.”
Just saw it! LOL!
Glinda, the so-called “Good Witch of the North,” clearly has weather-control powers, and as such is a sort of proto-trope of Karl Rove. She summons Dorothy’s house from Kansas with a tornado and drops it on the Witch of the East, killing her. She furthermore exerts an insidious precursor of MKUltra mind control techniques upon Dorothy, causing her to believe that her flying house had malfunctioned and crashed. Glinda then gives the Ruby Slippers to Dorothy; these slippers can teleport the wearer anywhere she wants. Naturally, Glinda refuses to disclose this information to Dorothy until the end.
The Witch of the West shows up and demands to know who murdered her sister and tries to claim her sister’s slippers as her rightful property. Glinda coldly rebuffs her and threatens to kill her with another dropped house. She then sends Dorothy on an unnecessary errand to the Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard figures that Dorothy is a tool of Glinda and sends her to fight and kill a far superior opponent, hoping the Witch of the West will do her in. This fails when Dorothy’s companions break into the Witch’s home and murder her by accident, not being fully cognizant of the physics in that aspect of the multiverse, wherein water is made up of tiny houses, which combined to slowly churn the Witch of the West into a liquid state.
Glinda then causes the Wizard’s balloon to go out of control and blow away, getting him out of the picture. Since we never hear from the Witch of the South, we can only assume that Glinda got rid of her some other way. This leaves Glinda as the only remaining powerful entity in all of Oz. She installs the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion as puppet rulers and sends Dorothy home. Glinda now has control over all of Oz, including the Emerald City’s lucrative opium (poppy) trade.
Just. As. Planned.
(The above is liberally abridged and paraphrased, from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/TheWizardOfOz)
That’s fascinating, thanks for the tip.
wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone that gets to see the reruns but is done well and believable.
Definitely not Judy Garland's Wizard of Oz...
Please, don't get me started.
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