Oof! THE WIZ lasts 133 minutes, and you can feel each one of them. While things pep up for a few interludes--Nipsey Russell's two songs, Ted Ross's "Mean Old Lion," Mabel King's "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News," and the wondrous "Brand New Day (Everybody Rejoice)"--this movie mainly just makes one bad move after another. Leaving aside the hiring of Joel Schumacher to write the screenplay, who thought Sidney Lumet was the right guy to make a musical? He specializes in gritty dramas, and he turns this into one ugly and depressing song-and-dance extravaganza.
Miss Ross is, yes, all wrong for the role. But even the moments when she might be able to wow us vocally are undercut by odd directorial choices. (Case in point: wouldn't "Ease On Down the Road" have been a much zippier number had it not been shot FROM THE BACK? I recently saw this movie with an audience, and you could feel the anticipation as the song began. By the end of the number, all the energy had been drained from the room.) Michael Jackson does a decent job with "You Can't Win," and it's nice to see his original face, but he's rather mewly throughout, and that gets annoying fast. And alas, Richard Pryor didn't seem to have any G-rated humor up his sleeve, so he offers little to the movie outside of stunt casting. (They could have gotten Bill Cosby and it would have made little difference.)
So while THE WIZ isn't a complete disaster, there's a lot to slog through to get to the good stuff. And Oz-as-New-York seems like a rather seedy place to visit. But then it's the pre-Giuliani Oz, after all.
Miss Ross is, yes, all wrong for the role. But even the moments when she might be able to wow us vocally are undercut by odd directorial choices. (Case in point: wouldn't "Ease On Down the Road" have been a much zippier number had it not been shot FROM THE BACK? I recently saw this movie with an audience, and you could feel the anticipation as the song began. By the end of the number, all the energy had been drained from the room.) Michael Jackson does a decent job with "You Can't Win," and it's nice to see his original face, but he's rather mewly throughout, and that gets annoying fast. And alas, Richard Pryor didn't seem to have any G-rated humor up his sleeve, so he offers little to the movie outside of stunt casting. (They could have gotten Bill Cosby and it would have made little difference.)
So while THE WIZ isn't a complete disaster, there's a lot to slog through to get to the good stuff. And Oz-as-New-York seems like a rather seedy place to visit. But then it's the pre-Giuliani Oz, after all.