The Wizard of Oz
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) | Release Date: August 25, 1939 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Film ThreatChris Gore
A masterpiece that was certainly decades ahead of its time. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
In set design, choreography, performances and music, The Wizard of Oz is a brilliant bauble of collective filmmaking, in what may have been Hollywood's greatest single year. [06 Nov 1998]
100
IGNStaff (Not Credited)
The scene where Dorothy opens the door of the house and steps into Oz and into color is striking. Read full review
100
Total FilmStaff (Not Credited)
This phantasmagorical fantasy really does represent old-school MGM filmmaking at its best – sets, make-up, costumes and music combining to quite stunning effect. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Not only is it wonderfully entertaining, but the issues it addresses, and the way it presents them, are both universal and deeply personal. And therein lies The Wizard of Oz's true magic. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Stack
This wonderful romp of a movie looks magical on the big screen: colors are a picnic for the eyes, details loom so clearly you can practically touch them and there's a sense of the larger-than-life with a film that's already larger than life. Read full review
100
VarietyTodd McCarthy
This is one vintage film that fully lives up to its classic status and should play with outstanding success to contemporary audiences of all ages. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The Wizard of Oz remains the weirdest, scariest, kookiest, most haunting and indelible kid-flick-that's-really-for-adults ever made in Hollywood. Read full review
100
BBCGeorge Perry
Each time it is shown, this extraordinary film embraces a new generation of children who succumb to its magic. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Wizard of Oz has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Despite its earnest endorsement of the idea that there's no place like home ... well, frankly there are plenty of places like boring old home, but nothing's like Oz. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsKate Cameron
Judy Garland is perfectly cast as Dorothy. She is as clever a little actress as she is a singer and her special style of vocalizing is ideally adapted to the music of the picture. Read full review
100
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Like Chaplin’s The Kid or ET The Extra-Terrestrial, The Wizard of Oz simply lays bare primal emotions, exposes our childhood anxieties about abandonment and powerlessness and brings to light the tension between the repressive comforts of home and the liberating terrors of the unknown marking all our adult lives. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
The Wizard of Oz is frantic, enchanting and spookily surreal. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
There's no place like home, and there will never be another movie like this one, a dazzling fantasy musical so beautifully directed and acted that it deserves its classic status. Read full review
100
VarietyJohn C. Flinn Sr.
It’s a mixture of childish fantasy and adult satire and humor of a kind that never seems to grow old. Read full review
100
EmpireAlan Morrison
Oz’s influence is boundless. Spellbinding stuff. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Like any classic work of children's entertainment, this best-loved of all Hollywood films almost has more to offer adult viewers; it's still easy to see why it amazed us as kids, but many of us have also grown to appreciate the wonders of its construction and its immense significance as a cultural touchstone. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
I don't find the film light or joyful in the least—an air of primal menace hangs about it, which may be why I love it. Read full review
100
SlashfilmJessica Mason
Eighty years on, The Wizard of Oz still stands as an icon of craft and the power of movies. For me, the moment that still amazes the most is one of the simplest: when Dorothy walks out of her displaced house and into Oz, from sepia to Technicolor. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Like many Hollywood classics, Oz benefited from happy accidents: Happiest of all was the casting, as Dorothy, of MGM teenage songbird Garland, whose wide-eyed emoting and passionate singing make the movie. Behind her is a near-perfect supporting cast. [18 Jun 1999, p.I]
100
Christian Science MonitorStaff (Not Credited)
They don't make 'em like this anymore! [13 Nov 1998, p.B2]
90
The TelegraphStaff (Not Credited)
Few films are more fun to watch than The Wizard of Oz, and few have such a charming message either. [28 Aug 2020]
90
The New York TimesFrank S. Nugent
A delightful piece of wonder-working which had the youngsters' eyes shining and brought a quietly amused gleam to the wiser ones of the oldsters. Read full review
90
The Observer (UK)Philip French
Somehow, for all the dollar-book Freud brought to bear on it, the picture comes up fresh, innocent and enchanting whenever you see it. Read full review
80
NewsweekStaff (Not Credited)
The more fanatic Ozophiles may dispute M-G-M's remodeling of the story, but the average movie-goer – adult or adolescent – will find it novel and richly satisfying to the eye. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineEric Henderson
A true amalgam of creative forces individually pooling their studio-contract talents like a hive of bees. Read full review
70
TimeStaff (Not Credited)
As long as The Wizard of Oz sticks to whimsey and magic, it floats in the same rare atmosphere of enchantment that distinguished Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When it descends to earth it collapses like a scarecrow in a cloudburst. Read full review
60
The New RepublicOtis Ferguson
The story of course has some lovely and wild ideas—men of straw and tin, a cowardly lion, a wizard who isn’t a very good wizard—but the picture doesn’t know what to do with them, except to be painfully literal and elaborate about everything. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRussell Maloney
Fantasy is still Walt Disney’s undisputed domain. Nobody else can tell a fairy tale with his clarity of imagination, his simple good taste, or his technical ingenuity. This was forcibly borne in on me as I sat cringing before M-G-M’s Technicolor production of The Wizard of Oz, which displays no trace of imagination, good taste, or ingenuity. Read full review
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