Has a good message underneath the darker stuff.

Rating: 6/10 (27 August 2014)

On the surface, The Wizard of Oz is a very dark and twisted tale. Dorothy the protagonist lives in the country, surrounded by corruption (for example, a mean-spirited local woman has relatives in high places, thanks to which she easily gets the local judge to sign off on an order to put down Dorothy's adorable dog Toto), crime (when Dorothy runs off to save Toto, she doesn't get more than a few miles from her house before coming across a vagrant who tries to rob her, and would've probably tried worse if the weather hadn't suddenly kicked up), and frequent natural disasters in the form of twister tornadoes. It's pretty much Hell on Earth, and it's no wonder that Dorothy is desperate to leave this dreadful place, to which effect she sings a very moving song in the beginning.
Then a development occurs which seems at first to be fortunate - Dorothy flies to the magical land of Oz, using her house as air transport. Well, the development quickly turns dubious, since Dorothy marks her arrival to Oz by killing the regional supervisor - the Wicked Witch of the East.
The local population called the Munchkins, strangely afflicted by mass stunted growth, goes ape with joy over this fact. Now, such shameless celebration of anyone's death is suspect to me. Moral people don't revel in murder so much, especially when it's a local official who is killed. But then I got to thinking: maybe this Witch had some genetic experiments going on in the area. That would explain why all the Munchkins are so underdeveloped physically. So I suppose that killing her was the right thing. When a foreign dictator flies so far off the rocker, you ice the barbaric scum. Sometimes Gandhi's methods don't work so well.
Anyway, at this point the movie starts to purposely mess with your head. Dorothy suddenly wants more than anything to go back home. Well, "a", we were led to believe that what she'd wanted most of all was an adventure. Now that she's got her wish, however, she just wants to return home. And "b", did she forget that they'll kill Toto once she comes back? Apparently so! That annoyed me extremely, because Toto was my favorite character in the entire romp. This dog was cute, and didn't blab much, unlike the other characters who seemingly did nothing else but whine about their problems.
That's basically the only type of people/beings that Dorothy gets to join her when she marches to Emerald City to get a ticket home - whiners looking for handouts. There's Scarecrow - a kind of field-based bird-bouncer who wants to magically gain cleverness. Obviously going the way of persistent studying and mental training doesn't even occur to him. Then there's Tin Man - a case of artificial intelligence gone completely haywire. He was designed for cutting wood, but must've short-circuited in a few places while rusting under the open sky, or maybe the reason his owner ditched him in the first place was because of programming defects... Anyway, now Tin Man is obsessed with obtaining a living heart, on the wild assumption that this will make him more emotionally complete. Consider the difficulty of obtaining a living heart - donor? stem cell technology? If it's genetic know-how he's after, the Wicked Witches seem to have that covered, what with the Munchkins and winged monkeys and all, so he'd be better off seeking audience with them, not some "Wizard" they know nothing about. Consider also the difficulty of fusing a living human heart with a metal robot. Finally, the entire endeavor is useless in principle - emotions come from the brain, not the heart. But the most ridiculous part of this is that the guy is already emotional like you wouldn't believe! All he ever does is cry.
Finally, the third minion Dorothy gains in her journey is Cowardly Lion, who is, frankly, a bouquet of psychological disorders. He is a bully, a narcissist, a neurotic, and has megalomaniacal tendencies to boot. Plus I find it rather strange that a flamboyant fellow like Lion absurdly has the mannerisms of an alcoholic dock worker.
All these freaky folks go to beg the "Wizard" for a handout that will solve their lives' problems. The only real "adventure" they encounter before getting to the Wizard is a poppy field. They become very sedated, well, the biological organisms among them do, but have no fear! The "good fairy" flies by and sprinkles some white powder on them, and they spring right back up and practically sprint to the Emerald City, singing on the way. You can see that all these indulgences have their effect, though - the characters have severe hallucinations while in the city. For example, one of the horses keeps changing colors.
Do you see what I mean by "dark"? At this point I was becoming somewhat depressed by all the immorality. But luckily, towards the end the movie actually becomes much better, and teaches the viewer several very important lessons: 1. In this world, external attributes and illusory things are at least as important than actual inner qualities, and sometimes more so. The Wizard uses a college diploma, among other things, to demonstrate this, because, indeed, in our society a useless piece of paper like that will open at least as many doors for a straw-brained guy like Scarecrow as actual mental ability. 2. It teaches people to be realistic. The land of Oz turns out to be just a fleeting fantasy that Dorothy had. The movie thereby says, and rightly so, that you should accept reality for what it is, and then work to change your circumstances - not wish for magical freebies. Consequently, I'd even say that there's a strong anti-religious message here, and for that alone, I forgive Oz all of its apparent flaws.