The value of Oz is a no-brainer

Rating: 7/10 (1 May 2005)

Some of the criteria here that people use to rip this movie are a hoot. i.e. "It's not realistic." (! well... it IS a child's fantasy) "They changed the book" is an argument rooted in the deeply absurd idea that movies are best when they strictly adhere to decisions made for the benefit of a completely different media. Come to think of it the book didn't have songs in it... Admittedly the films weird cult (as in Christianity) creates the biggest barrier to getting anything from the object of devotion.
While the decision to write off the land of Oz as a dream is a creative writing teachers nightmare, it probably saved the culture from fifty years of garbage sequels that would have sullied this film. That the book was "changed" is a strange complaint, because the larger point of contention is that they only filmed 3/4ths of it. The last portion of the book is completely missing. (the quadlings, the dainty china country, green glasses) The exclusion of these bits without their being missed, is indicative of how arbitrary Baums inclusions are.
Most of the altered elements are technically motivated. How do you have a swarm of field mice carry a lion out a poppy field in 1939? The slippers were changed to the more vibrant red color because the original silver slippers offered nothing that couldn't have been shown in the black and white world Dorothy has left. etc.
As it is, it offers an abundance for a child to digest and the inclusion of the missing elements would have compressed the rest and perhaps triggered exhaustion in the audience. My patience grows thin at the "If I were King" interlude and the movie mercifully omits the late developments. Any book would do well to have such a hack job done on it. Baums simplistic, chirpy books might be out of print by now if not for this movie. Furthermore Baum restlessly throws away populations and characters over the course of each book before they're even developed. There's a spoof of Baum's books just waiting to be written, called "The United Nations of Oz," in which Oz diplomacy is explained to suggest how all these nations, regions & peoples get along... it might be useful in our world.
You could complain about what it doesn't achieve but the movie is so packed with iconographic elements (the yellow brick road, munchkins, witches, malevolent trees) all entering the tableaux in breathless maximization (the way children prefer their stimulation) that the movie becomes powerfully vivid. The window has probably closed on the era in which you could intentionally produce a movie that plays as this does on the naivete and complexity of the American psyche.
My only complaint about this is that it is perfectly scaled to the venue which popularized it (TV). On the big screen the tiresome use of vaudeville shtick & cop-outs cheapens and trivializes plot points and grates on a viewer.
Next time you watch it, try cataloging which gender holds all the power in the movie. Margaret Hamilton terrifies kids, and her witch is iconographic. Can anyone show me a green witch before 1939? Some goofy lines are hysterically inappropriate seventy years later (only bad witches are ugly... toto too!) There's a moment as the Munchkins entreat her to "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" where Dorothy's rhythmic walk transforms into her happy dance-skip. It's a wonderful moment that for it's triviality shouldn't be as joyful and touching as it is. Dorothy's unacknowledged kiss from Glinda is also sweet.