simply beyond criticism

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2011)

What more needs to be said about a film that has gone beyond the status of a mere classic to become an enduring part of our national heritage? Is there anyone alive unfamiliar with Dorothy or Toto or the tornado or the Munchkins or the Yellow Brick Road or the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Wicked Witch of the West, the Emerald City, the Great and Powerful Oz, the ruby slippers, or the fact that there's no place like home?
Before the age of home entertainment most people knew the movie only from its frequent television screenings (always introduced, in our youth, by Danny Kaye), but seeing the film uninterrupted by commercials (and preferably on a big screen) is the best way to appreciate the fairy-tale simplicity of L. Frank Baum's story and the wealth of his imagination, in no way compromised by the economy of the film's Depression-era 1939 budget. This is one of those rare adaptations that is actually better than the original book: a film that will never grow old, for people who will never grow old.