Tin Man

To say that Tin Man is not as good as its near-perfect models is not to damn it, even faintly. Like Sci Fi's "Flash Gordon" update--which the Halmis also produce and which it resembles far more than it does "The Wizard of Oz"-- it's a good-looking, entertaining fantasy adventure, with a cast that is easy to spend time with.

It's a cornucopia of fanciful sets and costumes and more computer graphic imaging than you'll find anywhere else on TV, and a lot of it is pretty cool.

Once we've all acknowledged there really was no need to remake "The Wizard of Oz" because the original creators did a pretty good job back in 1939, it's safe to admit that the way it's been handled in Tin Man, a new miniseries, is a lot of fun.

Tin Man’s heart is in the right place, even if the execution of the story evokes, from time to time, creakiness of the metal man’s limbs.

It's like a miniseries built out of spare parts. Yet there's a reason those parts get chosen over and over, and thanks to Deschanel, whose DG plays it straight in a script that's one long wink, Tin Man brings them together to a place that feels a bit like home.

A big, sonorous dungeons-and-dragons affair that seems at every moment to call attention to its epicness, Tin Man would have benefited above all from more minimizing.

Ambitious and intriguing though it may be, Tin Man is simply too long, too grim and too determined to impose a Lord of the Rings universe-saving quest on top of a simpler, gentler story.

The miniseries' trite finish falls short of capturing the amazement we felt the first time we saw Judy Garland bring Dorothy to life.

Unfortunately, Robertson's heaving bodice is her most expressive aspect; this miniseries needed a villain with a wicked sense of humor, but she and the rest of Tin Man are dour and punitive.

Some of the performances are good, particularly by Deschanel (who gets to sing near the end, good news for anyone who saw "Elf"), McDonough and Cumming, but solid acting and monkeys flying out of, um, someplace aren't enough to justify spending six hours over three nights on a labored attempt to make a classic children's story seem grown-up and cool.

Replacing "Oz"'s joyfully timeless charm with perverse irony and nightmarish, hallucinatory imagery makes this three-night miniseries more of a lavishly quirky curiosity than a keeper.

Tin Man proves a bit of a mess. Sci Fi has done well with minis in December, but despite the intriguing concept three consecutive nights of this adventure falls several Yellow Bricks shy of a load.

While the preening and the chewed scenery from the cast are at times glorious to behold, there is no substance to wrap our heads around, no one to really root for

Peeps of sentimentality only serve to emphasize the film's uneven mix of the sardonic and the heartfelt. Tin Man unfortunately seems as bereft of an efficiently functioning ticker as is the titular character himself.

Baum's work almost collapses under the weight of a misguided re-interpretation.

It's a dour retelling of the L. Frank Baum story, and it just keeps sinking further and further into pointless thematic complexity and visual density.

Writers Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle are certainly inventive, if inventive can mean willing-to-crib-from-sci-fi-culture-past, but the Tin Man story doesn't hang together well.

The execution of "Tin Man" is flat, flatter, flattest. The dialogue is utilitarian, except when it's "Dungeons and Dragons" cliche.