Oz the Great and Powerful
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: March 8, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
21
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
EmpireKim NewmanMar 4, 2013
If there are post-Harry Potter children who don’t know or care about The Wizard of Oz, they might be at sea with this story about a not-very-nice grownup in a magic land, but long-term Oz watchers will be enchanted and enthralled. There’s even a musical number, albeit an abbreviated one. Mila Kunis gets a gold star for excellence in bewitchery and Sam Raimi can settle securely behind the curtain as a mature master of illusion. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 10, 2013
It's familiar enough to be comfortable but not so familiar that it feels worn and repetitive. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 7, 2013
That's why the more you like the Judy Garland film, the more you might appreciate Oz the Great and Powerful. Appreciate. Enjoy. Admire. Be glad to see. Have fun with ... But as for love - well, love will be harder to come by. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc MohanMar 7, 2013
Most of the time, though, it's a confusing mishmash featuring a fine actor too willfully operating outside his comfort zone. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedMar 6, 2013
Nothing in it comes close to the magic, the originality or the everlasting entertainment value of the original, which only cost $2.777 million and didn’t use a single computer-generated graphic. This says more about how much better movies were in 1939 than they are today. Still, I had enough fun to predict that history (or at least a tiny piece of it) seems destined to repeat itself. People just can’t get enough of this stuff. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMar 5, 2013
The cast, plainly packed with second or third choices, lets it down. Is there anything in James Franco’s past that suggests larger-than-life, a fast-talking, womanizing con-man? And the three witches – Theodora, Evanora and Glinda – are Bland, Blander and Blond Bland. Read full review
75
Film.comJordan HoffmanMar 5, 2013
Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallMar 7, 2013
It took brains to create such a sumptuous fantasia with pixels and keyboard swipes. Now, if it only had a heart. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMar 6, 2013
Oz the Great and Powerful vacillates between visual wonders and earthbound duds. Is there enough here to make viewers believe? Most probably. Even though the film has no ruby slippers, we all know there’s no place like home. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 7, 2013
As a series of sights, which movies like these are, Oz the Great and Powerful is more like "Oz the Digital and Relentless." Certainly this is true in its final half-hour, which seemed to me to be all explosions. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 6, 2013
Some of the surprises in Oz the Great and Powerful, the much-anticipated "Wizard of Oz" origins movie, are delightful. Others, however, sink the movie just below the point of recommendation, with the primary drawback falling on the lovely shoulders of Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis, as early versions of Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, respectively. Read full review
60
NPRBob MondelloMar 8, 2013
Oz the Great and Powerful tells the story of how the Wizard came to Oz, answering a question I suspect no one was asking, but with considerable digital wizardry. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMar 8, 2013
Is all of that to say that Oz the Great and Powerful comes even close to matching the timeless, iconic stature of 1939's "The Wizard of Oz"? No, of course not. That's not just a once-in-a-lifetime cultural phenomenon, but a once-in-many-liftimes one. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 8, 2013
Whether you like this movie may depend very materially on how you respond to Franco himself, but I found his casting very astute. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 7, 2013
Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichMar 6, 2013
It’s an earnest hope, to be sure, and the greatest strength of Sam Raimi’s imaginative, if highly uneven, take on L. Frank Baum’s series of children’s stories about that magical land over the rainbow is its unabashed sincerity. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 6, 2013
This trip isn’t so notable. It’s not bad. Some bits are enjoyable. But ultimately, other than some genuinely impressive visuals, it never makes a compelling-enough case to justify its existence. Read full review
60
Total FilmNeil SmithMar 1, 2013
A lavishly mounted re-telling that, for all its good intentions and visual wonders, can’t help seeming surplus to requirements. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin ChangMar 1, 2013
This elaborate exercise in visual Baum-bast nonetheless gets some mileage out of its game performances, luscious production design and the unfettered enthusiasm director Sam Raimi brings to a thin, simplistic origin story. Read full review
58
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanMar 10, 2013
What we get here is Oz the Amiable and Unthreatening. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 8, 2013
Raimi’s film is supposed to be about magic, but magic is in scant supply. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 6, 2013
Much of Oz The Great And Powerful’s fate is tied to James Franco’s performance as Oz, and the center barely holds, with Franco often looking as overwhelmed by the task as he was by his hosting job on Oscar night. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMar 6, 2013
The film is stuffed with three endings too many. You can't blame Raimi for wanting to give us our money's worth. But after a while, you just want him to get to the Happily Ever After already. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMar 8, 2013
The more suitably antic Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp were considered for the part before Franco wandered into the picture with his stoner grin. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirMar 7, 2013
Saying that Raimi’s trip to Oz is adequate eye candy with a good heart isn’t the same thing as saying it’s actually good. I was charmed at some moments, profoundly bored by others and almost never felt genuinely excited or emotionally engaged. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 7, 2013
Which is precisely what’s missing from Oz the Great and Powerful: that sense of emotional journey. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 7, 2013
There's no Judy Garland songs, no Scarecrow, no Tin Man, no Cowardly Lion. There's also no simplicity, no magic, no truth. Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissMar 7, 2013
Raimi, who launched his career with the cheapo horror mini-masterpiece "The Evil Dead" before helming the blockbuster "Spider-Man" trilogy, can’t infuse the story with much verve or joy. Read full review
50
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthMar 1, 2013
A valiant attempt to build on the magic of “The Wizard Of Oz,” and while it certainly doesn’t diminish the standing of that movie, Sam Raimi’s film provides proof that the more we know about the mysteries of our favorite stories, the less interesting they become. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 8, 2013
Aside from a trio of witches that can hold its own with Eastwick’s in the dishiness department, Oz the Great and Powerful is a peculiarly joyless occasion. Read full review
40
SlateDana StevensMar 8, 2013
A visually over-crammed, emotionally empty mega-spectacle on the model of Tim Burton’s "Alice in Wonderland." Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMar 1, 2013
A miscast James Franco and a lack of charm and humor doom Sam Raimi's prequel to the 1939 Hollywood classic. Oz the Wimpy and Weak would be more like it. Read full review
30
The New YorkerDavid DenbyMar 18, 2013
At the center of the movie, in place of the ardent, emotionally pulverizing Judy Garland, there is James Franco...as he smirks and winks, his reflexive self-deprecation comes off as a gutless kind of cool, and it sinks this odd, fretful, uncertain movie like a boulder. [18 March 2013, p.86]
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 7, 2013
Oz the Great and Powerful, like so many products of movie studios that have lost their way, is a Tin Man of epic proportions — bright and shiny, with no heart. Read full review
30
Village VoiceScott FoundasMar 5, 2013
Oz tilts towards the mawkish, as the sham wizard learns the value of selflessness and an incessant Danny Elfman score tugs so shamelessly at your tear ducts that it would make the Tin Man surrender his heart on the spot. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMar 7, 2013
Unfortunately, it has the model of the 1939 film to remind us how lacking in delight this version is. Read full review
25
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 7, 2013
About the movie industry’s misguided belief that it can distract the audience from a film’s narrative weaknesses with little more than flash and spectacle. That con might have worked with the rubes once upon a time, but in case Hollywood hasn’t noticed, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMar 7, 2013
Oz the Great and Powerful is an oppressive, bloated bore. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickMar 6, 2013
Save your money and wait for the new 3-D version of the 1939 classic that Warner Bros. has promised for later this year. Read full review
20
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 7, 2013
Can the major studios still make magic? From the looks of Oz the Great and Powerful, a dispiriting, infuriating jumble of big money, small ideas and ugly visuals, the answer seems to be no — unless, perhaps, the man behind the curtain is Martin Scorsese or James Cameron. Read full review
12
Slant MagazineCalum MarshMar 5, 2013
An amorphous melange of ill-fitting reference points and misappropriated aesthetics, a lumbering family blockbuster both tiresome and wholly indistinct. Read full review
0
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanMar 7, 2013
Don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors. There is nothing here that is great, or powerful. Worst of all, there’s nothing here that even feels like Oz. Read full review
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