The Best Musical Fantasy Ever

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2020)

Generation after generation, this downright bizarre little movie continues to fascinate viewers with its imaginative and surrealistic sets and score. It has created a cottage industry around a little girl from Kansas who ends up over the rainbow, only to find that life in a dream is as often a nightmare. What is so durable about the film is the way the elements all work together to tell a story that is enthralling no matter how many times you see it. "The Wizard of Oz" is the quintessential musical. Seeing it at just the right age somehow seems to make it watchable repeatedly at any age. The music is fully integrated into the story line. Everybody sings-except, of course for the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys. Evil beings don't sing. In addition to "Over the Rainbow," consider how memorable are "We're Off to See the Wizard" and "If I Only Had a Brain." Much has been written about this film, and it even spawned a Broadway play, "Wicked," and a reworked version as "The Wiz" starring Diana Ross, but there is simply no equaling this. And look at the casting: Judy Garland seems too old to play Dorothy-until you think that a girl going through puberty on a prairie farm, with no parents and no playmates but "three shiftless farmhands" might be the perfect candidate for Oz. Margaret Hamilton as the wicked witch has defined witchiness forever, and Billie Burke's irritatingly sweet voice convinces you that she really is a witch when she tells Dorothy that she knew all along how to send her home. Ray Bolger's dance sequences as the scarecrow are phenomenal. Jack Haley Jr. as the tin man is suitably sappy, and Bert Lahr couldn't pull off the cowardly lion any better than he did. (And those costumes must have been miserable to work in.) Lastly, the venerable actor Frank Morgan is perfect in his blustery role as the wizard and his various guises. BTW, if you wonder what the wicked witch's minions are singing in the "Winkie Song" as they march around with their spears, it's nothing more than "O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!" Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013