Just not my type of movie, I guess.

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2004)

Ok. I readily admit that Wizard of Oz is a classic. It's full of style, wonder, and originality. But I just don't like it. I didn't care much for it when I saw it as a kid, I didn't like it as an adult, and I certainly don't like it now that I've seen it 100 times thanks to my 3 year old nephew.
I don't mind musicals most of the time. One of my favorite animated films, The Prince of Egypt, is as full of songs as any similar Disney cartoon. But the songs in that film were well done in my opinion. They had sweep when they needed to be, hit emotional waves when it seemed appropriate. In the Wizard of Oz, everyone sings pretty much all the time, and it's one of those films where absurd words and terms are inserted simply to keep the rhymes going, even if the line doesn't make any sense. Imagine a Doctor Suess book being sung in chorus. Sure it rhymes, half of the words are made up. There's a good deal of that in Wizard.
And you better like "We're off to see the Wizard", the song you've heard since the beginning of time and already are tired of. You'll hear it in this movie about half a dozen times, without any significant changes or necessity. I know that movies like this are supposed to this way, it just drives one nuts.
The acting is typical of hammy 50s productions, just a decade older. Everyone enunciates very properly and/or hammily, and look to be on the verge of bursting into song, which often is the case. That's pretty much how it stays once Dorothy gets to Oz, which is after the boring first fifteen minutes of the film.
I know that people will seethe when they read this review. I'm sorry, I just really don't like this movie. As a musical, and a whimsical kids' movie, it succeeds at what it attempts to be. But I just can't understand why this is considered a film benchmark, when there are plenty of more interesting and less annoying musicals to be enjoyed. Granted, "Over the Rainbow" is a good song, and my favorite was one sung by the coroner of Oz (whose tune lasts about 4 verses). But the rest? Man...to me, it's just utter tedium. The movie may be good for kids, but I just can't understand why any adult would care to sit through it. I'm obviously in the minority, so what can I say. I just wanted to voice my opinion, which is that Wizard of Oz is vastly overrated. Read the book instead, or watch something better from the era such as Casablanca.