Campy fairy tale that is strangely heavy-handed.

Rating: 7/10 (17 February 2004)

A whirlwind hits Kansas and carries a young girl in to a strange and mystical world.
One of those products that you feel slightly stupid reviewing, but I guess a new audience for it is born every minute. Also it a good example of a book and film that, while joined at the hip, are also very different products. The book is light, throwaway and fun while the film gets very heavy and morose almost like a horror movie. Very strange for a film aimed at children.
Judy Garland's life was one big rollercoaster ride from beginning to end and seemed to involve an unfruitful search for happiness through people, produce and drugs. How apt that her most famous film should also feature a similar journey and how sad that while reading the script she could not take on the moral: That happiness comes from within and that life is what you make of it.
Garland's talent was (and remains through film) immense. What a pair of lungs and what vocal control. A freak of nature that was plucked from nowhere, exploited and then thrown away by the studio system. She died young, but she had lived her show business life already and had no role left to play other than sing to ever dwindling gay audiences. Oz maybe a cruel place at times, but it is no more cruel than the real world it apes.
Here we have main characters that are in search of change, but they are living in a "cast" society in which function seems given by the state. Maybe I am thinking too literally, but how does Oz go round? Who paints the road yellow - and why? A road doesn't have to be completely painted to be followed and why brick, very expensive way to pave a road! Maybe examples of how nonsense stands out more in films.
Maybe they thought that making this a musical would make it lighter and more fun. But it doesn't really work that way. Fun song and dance is one thing, but this hardly taking away the sense of danger and threat. Wicked witches are killers (or at least potential killers) so how can they be taken lightly or in jest? What is being demonstrated is that making the written page literal goes beyond the original intent. Children are meant to be slightly scared - not petrified as they would be watch this film.
Legends have grown up around this film in production. From colour difficulty to the parties that the "little people" threw after filming was done for the day. I am sure most of them are myths and besides, I am sure there is partying and sex after the end of most day's filming on most films.

In the Wizard of Oz we are transported to a strange world with great performances from all the leads, especially Garland who has to carry the weight of this giant production on her shoulders. I feel for her, where else is a child (or near child) expected to carry such responsibility but in show business? I guess the only world stranger than Oz is the world of show business.
PS Do I get a cookie for not mentioning Over The Rainbow once in the main review?