[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ilms have taken a much different direction lately. They’re adopting CGI as the main attraction, with writing and screenplay as secondary objectives. Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful is no exception. The Wizard of Oz prequel focuses mainly on sparkly visuals, like flowers built of gems and a kingdom of emeralds. Since we already know that this is terrible imbalance in the art of filmmaking, I’m going to skip to the important reasons why this new Oz is nothing but a nice name in gold font.

It’s evil

“That seems to be the direction children’s films are taking these days,” a friend said as we exited the cinema. He was, of course, speaking about the overabundance of evil in this title. I’ve never seen something with such potential to harm the many young ones that were watching the same film I did this evening. This predecessor to the famous Wizard of Oz is not your normal wicked witch who challenges her “good” sister to a duel and then the better wins the kingdom. It’s completely the opposite, with strange twists along the way.

Things start out with a “good” witch who greets the “wizard [they’ve] been waiting for”. He goes to destroy the evil witch’s source of power: her wand. But then he discovers that the sister of the first good witch is indeed the true bad one, and he joins forces with the one he was supposed to destroy. With that, the wicked witch becomes furious and convinces her good sister that Oz is a liar and doesn’t care for her at all (after he told her “sure, you can be my queen”). They now join together and vow to do away with the wizard and his many new followers.

Along the way, the good witch becomes even more evil than her sister, to a point where it doesn’t seem like she can control her. She becomes a monster — literally — and dominates the film with a thick cloud of vile unhappiness. From then on, the film doesn’t even seem like it has potential. My heart ached to see what was happening, and the end was no consolation: she lives on to wreak havoc in the future.

This harmful amount of evil in something that seems to be a children’s film (it’s rated PG and I haven’t seen one of those in a good long while) is neither an adventure nor a good thing for any child to watch. That can be said about a lot of adult films, but not The Wizard of Oz! I just felt horrible for what those children were thinking and what stuff like this will do to their future. A good half of the audience was under 12 and just imagine what will become of their opinions thanks to this. We underestimate the influence it has on our children, I tell you.

Who wrote this?

Some of the lines are just horrible. They’re so bad you feel like you’re watching a cheap children’s show on Cartoon Network, or something like Blue’s Clues. Those are all good and well for what they are, but why on earth do you need to incorporate something so dreadful in a Disney film with a budget of $200 million? Some of the lines are appalling, and none of the acting is impressive. There wasn’t one moment I felt the actors cared about what they were doing. They just seemed to be going along with it the whole time.

Even the humor, of all things, was subpar. There were a few genuinely comical parts, but the rest of the script was forced. That and either James Franco’s acting or character was seriously out of tune with the rest of the picture. He was supposed to be quirky, in a way, but failed in a most dreary way. It was hard to watch some of the parts and I found myself face-palming frequently.

A recycled musical score

Danny Elfman got no points for originality in his soundtrack here. The film opened with the “Oh Canada” melody — I do not jest — and played much like Alice in Wonderland without the chanting of the name every measure. It was your typical Disney film score. The only memorable thing was that one of the tracks closely resembled The Imperial March. After that I lost faith in Elfman’s ability to redeem himself.

Forced romance and even worse acting

I felt embarrassed to be watching such ridiculous kissing scenes. Oscar (the wizard) is no different than James Bond, except for the fact that he can withstand a tornado. He goes after every woman in the film. Five, to be exact. That would be all the main characters, as well. Disney, who approved this nonsense? I didn’t pay $10 to watch Franco kiss everyone and still end up being the same egotistical dimwit that he was at the beginning. What kind of redemptive ending is that? Not that they could have ended it any better, to quote from the film, “considering the circumstances”.

Score: 4/10.

You know it’s bad when you consider asking for your money back, and I had never done that before. There’s no reason to watch Oz as it’s nothing short of disappointing. The film couldn’t get one thing right, and it didn’t have any consistency in editing either. As another friend said afterward, “It looked like a cut and paste job.” That’s exactly what it was.

On a better note, the trailer for Iron Man 3 showed before Oz and it does look rather good. A usual story, but great trailer music.