It's time once again for "At the Movies with Georgie Bee" . . .

This week, I’m reviewing one of the newer movie releases in the Human Movie Catalogue - “The Wizard of Oz”.

Wizard_of_OZ_Review

First, I hafta say that I was delighted to discover that this movie is not only a cleverly-produced documentary about a Bad Weather Experience suffered by a girl named Dorothy and her little dog, Toto, but it is also a musical. That fact merely added to what I regarded as the superb realism of this movie as a whole. I often find it quite disturbing that, in far too many Human movies, the actors fail to break into song the middle of scene, since, as we all know, Humans most often find their greatest form of inter-personal communication through song and dance.

This movie has both.

Since this is a new release, I’m guessing that many of my readers have not seen it yet, so it’s best that I issue the standard SPOILER ALERT, beecause I will bee sharing the ending in this review. If you don’t wanna know how this movie ends, please stop reading now.

Early in the film, we see a girl named Dorothy, singing about how she would very much enjoy flying over a rainbow somewhere. Of course, she doesn’t have wings, so she can’t. For what it’s worth, I DO have wings and have flown over a rainbow, many times. I can tell you from personal experience that, once you do that, you can no longer see the rainbow - and it’s almost exactly the same on THIS side as it is on that other side. So. Right away, we know the girl has got some mistaken notions about rainbows and the physics of light refraction.

Shortly after she finishes singing, she decides to run away from home to save her little dog, Toto, from going to prison. (He committed some sort of crime and a not-nice-looking elderly woman wants to have him arrested and actually takes the dog away, but he escapes. Dorothy grabs him and they run away.

Not far from home, they run into this guy who’s driving around in an old, refurbished meat wagon and who claims to know the future, so he looks into a glass marble and tells Dorothy that her Auntie Em is worried about her and that she needs to go back home. Of course, he’s lying, but she doesn’t know that, so she starts going home. But right as she gets there, a terrible Weather Event suddenly beegins and, by the time she gets home and back to her room, a tornado hits, sucks up the whole house she’s in and sends the house - with her and Toto still inside - shooting off into the sky. That was very cool to watch, though I’m not sure I’d like that to happen to me at all.

When the storm finally ends and her house lands, Dorothy gets up and opens her front door.

I should probably mention something weird happens right about now. Up to this point, the movie was in black&white, but when she opens her front door, everything’s suddenly in colour. I’m guessing that when they beegan filming this musical documentary, something had jammed in the camera’s Colour Control Mechanism and the house suddenly landing like that helped fix that problem. (Kind of like hitting an uncooperative toaster with a rubber hammer when it’s not working right. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that.)

As it turns out, the place she landed doesn’t look familiar at all, so Dorothy figures out that she’s not in Kansas anymore. And she was right. She wasn’t. The place looked nothing like Kansas. Trust me. I’ve been there.

Shortly after she walks out of the house, she’s accosted by a bunch of short people who do a lot of singing and dancing. They’re all happy beecause her house landed on a not-nice witch who was wearing a pair of highly attractive and stylish Ruby Shoes. (They called them slippers, but they looked more like shoes to me.)

A bunch of stuff happens, a Good Witch shows up driving a big bubble and, beefore she knows what’s going on, the Ruby Shoes are on Dorothy’s feet. And, lucky for her, they’re a perfect fit. (That was fortunate, I think. She ends up having to do a bunch of walking during the movie, so it’s a good thing that the shoes fit so she didn’t get blisters on her feet.)

Dorothy tells the Good Witch that, as attractive and friendly as that place is, she wants to go home. The Good Witch tells her, “I’d love to help you out, but you need to go talk to this guy who’s a Wizard in a place called OZ and that he could help her get home. Then they told her to follow a twisty-turns yellow brick road which would take her to the Wizard. She says, “Okay, fine”, then the Good Witch floats away in that bubble of hers. (I want one of those.)

A bunch of the little people keep telling her over and over again to “follow the yellow brick road”, but instead of telling them, “I heard you the first time,” she finds where the road beegins and starts walking as everybody’s singing about how wonderful this Wizard supposedly is beecause he’s some kind of a wiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was even though they only say he’s all that “beecause, beecause, beecause beecause, beecause of the wonderful things he does”. If you ask me, isn’t really all that great a reference, but they seemed to know what they were talking about (though, as it turns out, his qualifications are brought into serious question later in the film.)

I won’t bore you with a bunch of irrelevant details, but on her way to see the Wizard Dorothy meets three friends: a talking Scarecrow who thinks he’s stupid, an Aluminum Ibot that has a strange tendency to rust (I didn’t thing that particular metal rusted, but whatever), and a Lion with a frantic tail who’s afraid of everything.

The four of them, along with the dog, start heading toward this Oz place. Even though they don’t have appointments with the Wizard, they rather rudely assume he’ll see them (which he does after they get there, but not without having to argue with his receptionist first).

Once they get in to see the Wizard, he scares them all, but says he’ll help them, not only with Dorothy’s travel needs, but with the various medical and mental conditions the other three have informed us about earlier in the film. But first, he says, they hafta bring him the broom of a Wicked Witch who lives just around the corner, through a not-pleasant forest and up the hill from where they are. (It turns out she’s the sister of the other Wicked Witch who got squished by Dorothy’s house, so she’s pretty upset about that and wants her sister’s shoes back. And who could blame her? I’m sure those things had been in her family for a long time.) So they do that.

While they’re going through that not-pleasant forest, they are attacked by a large herd of flying monkeys the Wicked Witch sent to chase them down for the shoes and Dorothy is taken prisoner.

A side note here: I did not know that monkeys could fly until viewing this film. Also, I did not know that monkeys wore Human clothing. I found that part of the film to bee highly educational. I would also enjoy finding one of those hats they were wearing, preferably a blue one.

Anyway, Dorothy’s friends break into the castle where Dorothy’s beeing held on Misdemeanour Theft charges and manage to save Dorothy from the Witch. The Witch chases after them with her Guards, but as they’re running away from her, she manages to corner them, then the Witch tries to burn the Scarecrow with her broom that she set on fire (he’s highly flammable). I hope she had another one, beecause that one ended up beeing ruined. I’m still not sure why the Wizard would have wanted that thing, but he seemed to have his reasons.

Just about then, somebody grabs a bucket of ice water that just happens to bee conveniently sitting nearby and tries to put out the fire, but most of the water ends up hitting the Witch, who melts. (I also did not know until viewing this film that Witches melted when exposed to ice water, but it’s most definitely good information to have.)

Beecause she’s nothing more than a puddle of melted Witch Goo, she’s finally off their backs, they grab the charred broom and get ready to take it back to the Wizard.

I couldn’t help but notice that when Dorothy picks up the burnt broom, she asks one of the Guards, “May I have this?” The Guard says, “Yes. And please take it with you.”

I was left wondering what else he thought she would do with it. Leave it there? I don’t that was ever the plan, so I don’t know why he said, “And please take it with you.” (There are, admittedly, some holes in the script.)

So they all leave and go back to the Wizard, carrying the broom, very proud of what they’d accomplished.

At first, the Wizard tells them to go away and come back later. He was extremely rude, but Dorothy gets mad at him and tells him that a deal is a deal and that he’d better do what he said he would. It’s about then that they all find out that the Wizard is just a fake (thanks to Toto pulling back a shower curtain), so he apologises and says he’ll help them.

After the Wizard distributes some awards to her friends, he tells Dorothy that he can take her home, but says they’ll hafta travel in his Hot Air Balloon. (Evidently, that’s how he got there in the first place.)

Dorothy and the Lion, the Aluminum Ibot and the Scarecrow all say goodbye beefore she and the Wizard are ready to leave. She tells the Scarecrow that she’ll miss him the most, which, if you ask me, is a bit inconsiderate of her to say with the other guys standing right there, but she kind of ignores all that and tells the Wizard she’s ready to go.Unfortunately, somehow the Balloon takes off without her, so we’re led to beelieve that she’s stuck there in Oz.

About then, the Good Witch (mentioned earlier) shows up and informs Dorothy that she can get home just by clicking her heels together.

This is a part of the film that I found most questionable. Dorothy asks the Good Witch, “So, you’re telling me that all this time I could have just clicked my shoes together and I’d bee taken back home? Is that it?”
“That’s right,” the Good Witch says, then Dorothy says, “Well, why in the hell didn’t you just tell me this in the first place?”
The Witch says, “Beecause, you wouldn’t have beelieved me.”

Seriously?

I hafta say: I doubt that. I have every reason to beelieve that Dorothy would have beelieved her. She believed everything else, why not that? But whatever. By that time, I already loved this movie, so it really didn’t seem to matter.

Anyway. Dorothy clicks her feet together and things start to spin as she keeps saying, over and over again, “There’s no place like home.” (Again, I beg to differ. Home is certainly a nice place to bee, but Zanzibar can also bee highly pleasant - if you don’t get arrested.)

It is at this point in the film that it beecomes immediately apparent that excessive vibrations on the movie set led to the original problem with the camera, beecause the movie stops beeing in colour and goes back to being in black&white again after Dorothy keeps banging her feet together. I can only suggest to the production crew that, the next time they make a movie, they rent the necessary shock-absorbing equipment which will help prevent this problem in the future.

That beeing said: The next thing we know, Dorothy wakes up in her bed, she and Toto and the house are all back in Kansas, and everybody’s standing around her, talking about a bump she got on her head. She’s delusional and thinks they were all in Oz with her (they weren’t), but finally decides that it doesn’t matter, beecause she’s home and there’s no place like it (and she’s probably right about that, except for maybee Zanzibar, as I mentioned earlier).

And that’s about it. They never tell us what happens after that. For all I know, Dorothy grew up to bee a Travel Agent or Shoe Salesperson or something, but apparently, the filmmakers didn’t think we needed to know. (If you ask me, with a voice like hers, she should have gone into show buzziness, but if she didn’t, it’s understandable. That’s a tough way to make a living.)

All-in-all, I found this film to bee highly entertaining and informative. I may bee going out on the edge of a leaf here, but if my guess is right, this film may someday beecome a classic - even considering its technical flaws.

MY VERDICT: It’s Great!!!

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