Return to Oz

Rating:
Summary: Baum's True Vision
Review: Many people verbally attack this movie & claim to be fans of "The Wizard of Oz" I am a true fan of all things Oz. I love "Return to Oz" as much as I love "The Wizard of Oz". "Return to Oz" truly captures L. Frank Baum & John R. Neill's visions of Oz. Many people were expecting the "Wizard of Oz 2" but it was nearly 45 years after the "Wizard of Oz" was made & it would be impossible to create an exact sequal & times had changed the movie-goers of the 80s didn't want musicals. "Return to Oz" should be viewed as its own movie, not "The Wizard of Oz 2", it should be viewed an adaption of "The Marvelous Land of Oz" & "Ozma of Oz" that just happens to use the Ruby Slippers from the "Wizard of Oz". "Return to Oz" also captures more Teen age audiences, many of my school-mates prefer "Return to Oz". Please give this film a chance.

Rating:
Summary: Belated sequel
Review: Disney captures L. Frank Baums darker side of Oz in this belated sequel to the 1939 classic, The Wizard Of Oz. 10 year old Faruza Balk takes the role of Dorothy Gale and makes the part her own. There is a much darker undertone to this Oz film. No colourful lands or jolly songs! Infact its mood is vastly sombre and hauntingly atmospheric throughout which may make it a little scary for very young children but its still an enthralling and compelling classic which is (for once) a respectable sequel, though you can never beat the origanal.
The story is set months after the tornado which had transported Dorothy over the rainbow into the colourful land of Oz. Dorothy is haunted by her adventures there and so Aunt Em decides to take her to a clinic to see a doctor. She has to stay over night at the dark, eerie looking clinic. These particular scenes are spooky and jumpy and will have children on the edge of their seat. Its whilst during a torrential thunder storm, she manages to escape but whilst running away from the evil Nurse Wilson (played to perfection by Jean Marsh), she falls into a river and is swept away into the land of Oz. To her amazement she sees her old house that landed on the wicked witch of the East on her first adventure there but then to her horror she discovers the yellow brick road all broken into bits and her old friends like the scarecrow, the tinman and the cowardly lion have all been turned into stone. Dorothy soon makes new friends with Pumpinkhead, Tik Tok the clockwork man and a talking chicken (accompanying her on her jouney throughout in replacement for Toto). On her adventures she sees trees that have sandwiches growing from them and has to encounter the evil wheelers, the Nome King and Princess Mombi (another fantastic and effective turn from Jean Marsh who is superb in each of her roles in the film) whilst trying to restore Oz back to how it was before. Particularly chilling are the scenes where Dorothy is in Mombies castle and goes into a room which is mirrored with different heads. Plenty of jumpy moments and Will vinnton's Claymation special-effects sequences are superbly done. Surprisingly Return To Oz didn't garner nearly as much praise and recognition as it should have done but even so, this is a fantastic classic that makes essential and compelling viewing!

Rating:
Summary: Not Quite Over The Rainbow
Review: Disney has owned the film rights to L. Frank Baum's sequels to "The Wizard of Oz" for decades, and actually started preproduction on "The Rainbow Road To Oz" back in the '50s. That film never got made, and Disney shelved the Oz books until the '80s when it released this film. "Return to Oz" is based mostly on the second and third books in the series--the basic plot coming from "Ozma of Oz" (which is the story of Dorothy and Ozma rescuing the royal family of a neighboring kingdom, who have been turned into ornaments by the Nome King), with additional characters and episodes from "The Marvelous Land of Oz" (which is about an all-girl army overthrowing The Emerald City, and had already been loosely adapted as "Journey Back to Oz") added in, along with some original material. The new material is the weakest part of the movie--I don't think Baum would have sent Dorothy for shock therapy--but Disney does well by some Baum characters and scenes, especially the Wheelers, the Gump, Tik-Tok, and Princess Mombi (actually a combination of two characters) with the detachable heads. The Nome King was a big disappointment, though. In the books, he's a fat, little troll (as a Nome or Gnome should be), but Disney decided to use the latest in computer animation, turning the Nome King into a talking rock-formation; they'd have done better to go with the original model. He's less a character here than a special effect, and an oportunity to present Baum's humor which is totally lacking here was missed. Fairuza Balk, however, is a revelation as Dorothy. No, she's no Judy Garland, nor does she try to be. She gives a faithful interpretation of Dorothy as written by Baum, and she is the glue that holds this picture together. And, like Garland, she has a little magical spark in her that comes across on film. Altogether not a bad movie, but Baum's wonderful books deserve better than this. With a new Oz movie and a TV series which each present different/modern views of Oz on the way, it's a shame nobody will simply film the stories from the books. MGM did it, and look what a success they had!

Rating:
Summary: Strange and Beautiful
Review: Sometimes wonderful things aren't wrapped in shiny wrapping. Such is Return to Oz which finds a happy, realistic, medium between the 1939 film and L. Frank Baum's books. The grenadine has been sucked out, but remnants of the 1939 film still remain (such as the RUBY slippers). What we find could be another socio-commentary film - the aftermath of growing up and child-hood dreams (or the reality of child-hood dreams revisted - that not everything is as it seemed). Fairuza Balk is beautiful and real in her creation of Dorothy - the score is haunting and has some of the same orchestral beauty of Arthur Freed's 1939 score. Some issues in this movie are not for kid's who grow up on Gumby and Barney - but if you wanna jolt your kid into reality at an early age - this flick is for them.

Rating:
Summary: Dorothy's Return
Review: I wasn't born until 2 years after this film came out theatres. When it came out on video in the early ninties, my mom and I always used to watch it with me. I'll be honest, this movie always used to scare the bejesus out of me. But I thought this was a well done, no, that would be an understatement, a TERRIFIC movie. It was nice to see the return of the ruby slippers. Although, the part that scared me most was when Mombi put on that scary head that she put on when she went psycho. I always used to cover my eyes.

It was also nice to see Dorothy's old house in the ruins of Munchkin Land. And Dorothy's confusion as to the Munchkins whereabouts. I guess the reason why I like it is because a girl is the hero. I'm a boy, so I've always been intrigued by heroines. Especially Dorothy. This is one of the greatest movie sequals of all time. What would be even more amazing would be a triqual.

Rating:
Summary: Return to Oz
Review: The thing with this movie is YOU CAN'T COMPARE IT TO THE JUDY GARLAND CLASSIC.To me this wasn't ment as a sequel to the 1939 version.If people would stop comparing it to "The Wizard of Oz" I mean don't get wrong The Wizard of Oz is my FAVORITE movie but this movie makes it seem that OZ is more real.This movie is MUCH more scarier to the Judy Garland Dorothy.Sit down and watch this DVD but DO NOT I REAPT DO NOT COMPARE IT TO THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Rating:
Summary: "We're a long way from Kansas..."
Review: The ability to revisit childhood classics can be a poisoned chalice. We all know this. There are few things more disheartening than returning to a book or a film of which you have such fond memories, only to discover that it's actually rubbish of the lowest order.

I rented 'Return to Oz' this weekend - and found it to be not only still fantastic, but even better than I remember it being.

I first saw this film at the cinema when I was five years old. At the time, I was thrilled and freaked out in equal measure; watching it again now, at a remove of seventeen years, I get the same emotions. It's wonderfully twisted: Dorothy undergoing shock treatment to get rid of her dreams of Oz, the shattered yellow brick road, Princess Mombi with her interchangeable heads (and the headless dancing girl statues that she harvested them from!). There are no twee songs or overly-optimistic fluffiness here. Well, a little of the latter, but I can forgive a happy ending when the journey there is so deliciously dark and uncompromising. A genuine sense of menace pervades the whole film; Dorothy's victory over Mombi and the Nome King never feels like a foredrawn conclusion.

And the Wheelers are just as creepy as they ever were...

Fairuza Balk turns in an excellent performance as a brave, intelligent little girl determined to do whatever it takes to save what she believes in; and there is a real sense of character development by the end of the film that doesn't consist solely of "Aren't we all better people now?"

Distinctly creepy and disturbingly clever, today just as it was for a five-year-old in 1985.

But why-oh-why isn't available in PAL VHS or Region 2 DVD? I want my own copy...!

Rating:
Summary: Every kid should see it.
Review: I remember watching this overseas when my parents would go to the embassy, while I was in the 2nd/3rd grade. I love the movie so much back then that I'd watch it whenever we'd go over there. It was scary, of course, with all the heads in cases and whatnot, but come on... I'm 23 now, and I own a copy myself to watch whenever I want a good squirm (but, then, maybe it's just because I remember being so freaked out by Mombi when I was a kid... maybe not...). I definitely recomend it for someone who wants to watch a great "kids" movie with or without children in their presence. It's good for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: OZ has gone OZ-some
Review: I first watched this when i was 10 yrs old when my mother brought it home one night for me to watch and I loved it more the origianal film. I am also glad they didnt go by the way Dorothy was portrayed in the later books as a short haired blonde,lol. Anyways, I loved how they mixed The Land of Oz and Ozma of OZ togehter. The sets were beautiful and well made to portray the book and I believe that they shoulkd actually come out with another movie just for the [heck] of it! Awsoem movie check it out. You wont be disapointed. oh by the way I am 17 now so yeah, lol.

Rating:
Summary: Just What the Author Intended...?
Review: I saw this film at its premiere in Seattle (The Emerald City) in 1985. I had read the Oz books for years (including the then-elusive non-Baum books written after his death) and always loved the mix of danger, whismy, and enchantment in the books.

I grew up (like every other person in America)with memories of the 1939 musical--but even as a kid I hated the fact that the MGM musical messed so much with the dangerous and frightening aspects of Oz, turning everything into a candy-coated Technicolor dream.

Thus, when I finally saw RETURN TO OZ (based on two books, OZMA of OZ and THE LAND of OZ), I realized that the filmmakers had actually sat down and read the books. Gone were the happy go-lucky images of a very safe place (was Judy Garland's Dorothy ever truly in danger?!?) and in its place was a fairyland full of dark dreams, scary villains, and entirely unique characters. And yet, most of America kept asking, "Where's the Munchkins?"

In fact, the film critic for our local paper so trashed the film on its release that I (as a lowly high school sophomore) wrote him a detailed letter explaining what he had missed in the film by spending all his time comparing it to the MGM film. He (like most of America) missed some wonderful moments: Fairuza Balk's film debut as a real, brave, and sometimes scared little girl being called on to save an entire country from extinction, the Oscar-nominated special effects that brought to life characters that had only existed on paper (like Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Nomes), and the great performances by British actors Nicol Williamson and Jean March as the villains.

Walter Murch and his team got everything right with this one, even down to character design: look at how closely the Oz chracters (Tik-Tok, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, etc.) match the way they looked in John R. Neil's illustrations; listen to the amazing score composed by David Shire, full of life, brilliance, and haunting motifs (the opening credit sequence alone gives chills); and the use of Will Vinton's Claymation (of California Raisins fame) to bring the rock-based Nomes to life.

Unfairly dumped by Disney in the ensuing years (to the point that this DVD version isn't even released by them), the film is only now being rediscovered by people who love great fantasy, great filmmaking, and who truly love to see OZ on screen.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!