User Reviews

Have you ever been to one of those school plays where you know all the kids, and there's not very good actors, and they're not very good singers, and the set direction isn't very good and it's way too long and nothing in the story really makes all that much sense, but you have fun because you know and love the people on the stage and you're happy that they're having fun? Well, imagine that exact situation, except that they CAN sing and the set direction in seemingly cocaine-induced. The acting is still horrible, it's WAY too long and most of the story, despite the fact that you know the tale in and out, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Also, Dorothy is a Harlem kindergarten teacher with a social anxiety disorder. Oh, and the entire cast is black.

And I mean the ENTIRE cast. The film is The Wizard of Oz entirely starring, from top to bottom, black folk. The fact that old whitey Sidney Lumet and Co. try to approximate both the best and worst associated with black culture, and succeed about half the time makes the entire production toe the line between celebratory and sort of racist; for example, the munchkins celebrate Dorothy crushing the Wicked Witch of the East because they were tagging up her walls, and one of the other witches is glad because now she can get back to running numbers. I'm tempted to read some sort of social critique in the scarecrow's introduction, but I honestly don't think it occurred to them. It seems like it vacillates between poking fun at stereotypes and enforcing them, but if you don't take it too seriously, it ends up being a non-issue.

Needless to say, especially for a film featuring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones working together, the music is among the highlights. If the numbers are not necessarily very memorable, they're solid enough that they kept the flow going and made the wait between songs where the cast makes painful attempts to deliver dialogue easier, because I knew something visually splendid and completely ridiculous was right around the corner. In the film, Kansas has been turned into Harlem, and Oz has been turned into a sort of bizarro-NYC. The yellow brick road is on the Brooklyn Bridge, the Wicked Witch has set up shop in Shea Stadium, and the Emerald City is none other than the World Trade Center.

Like I said, the acting is horrible. Diana Ross is a terrible actress, and is bizarrely sort of scary-looking, although Michael Jackson is surprisingly adept. Despite being caked in ludicrously ugly make-up (there's never been an easier plastic surgery joke), he has charm and presence, something she has none of. The rest of the cast were seemingly all cast for their dancing prowess or their access to drugs to keep the filmmakers with ideas (Mr. Pryor!). Nipsey Russell (easily the best), Ted Ross, Mabel King, Lena Horne are varying degrees of quality, but no one makes much of an impact thespian-wise.

One thing that my Sidney Lumet quest has proved to me is that Sidney Lumet has no idea how to expand plays in their travails from the stage to the screen. 12 Angry Men, his first and still greatest film, as well as his captivating take on Murder on the Orient Express, worked for him strictly because he didn't HAVE to expand the outlook, they took place in a small room and in a train car, respectively. The Offence was simply four extended sequences of people arguing in different rooms. Equus was people standing around discussing psychology in different rooms. Long Day's Journey Into Night was among the most interminable experiences I've ever had to sit through. When characters have more than one room to traverse in Sidney Lumet films, it always comes off like they're just going offstage and waiting for their cue, and The Wiz is no exception. In fact, I felt the atmosphere, I could hear the ambient chatter, I could see the actors go off, and the straightforward lightning fills, and really, all that was missing was the blackout for the transitions.

Overall, I think this charming raggedness along with several gloriously insane setpieces (for example, when they get attacked by inanimate object in the subway, garbage cans try to eat Michael Jackson's arms...with their teeth!; or when I found that apparently the "urban" equivalent of poppy flowers...is hookers) is what kept me with the film until its ending, a full two hours and fifteen minutes after it began. In fact, the film that The Wiz (retroactively) brought to mind was Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King, a film featuring a talented cast that could have become a gloriously over-the-top camp classic is only it wasn't so goddamn long. Well, The Wiz is both longer and better than In the Name of the King, but it doesn't make the bloated length any more tolerable.

Its closest actual contemporary is the equally ill-received Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but where that film alternated on an almost perfectly 50-50 basis between hugely enjoyable covers of Beatles songs, and apesh-t crazy setpieces, The Wiz has about 35% good music and 35% visual flair, leaving a disappointing 30% of downtime. It makes it all the more frustrating because you know that everyone involved is talented, and that with some judicious trimming, it could have functioned, if not as a classic, at least as a camp classic, and I could really like it as much as I had really hoped I would. It's not like this story can't be told in less time. That other version you may have seen contained everything this film did, just as many songs, and told it in a whopping 101 minutes. Regardless, that numerical breakdown in quality pretty much makes the final score a pretty easy figure to compute: {Grade: 7/10 (B-/C+) / #13 (of 20) of 1978}

THE WIZ is a bad movie. It is a very bad movie. It is an extremely very bad movie.

To watch it is to be infuriated by just how much potential it has and how far it falls from even vaguely achieving success. A black, urban version of "The Wizard of Oz" is an intriguing idea. The musical score is okay and at least three of the songs are better than average. The budget was obviously substantial and a lot of effort was put into transforming New York City into Munchkinland, the Emerald City and points in between. But rather than being in awe of the spectacle, one is more likely to stare in disbelief and ask "What were they thinking?"

Sidney Lumet, a fine director noted for making small, dark and often depressing dramas (12 ANGRY MEN, FAIL-SAFE, THE PAWNBROKER, etc.), seems ill-prepared to make a big budget musical based on a series of children's books -- and, unfortunately, he proves it. I don't think he makes a single intelligent directorial decision in this entire film: the lighting is gloomy, camera placement consistently ineffective and the editing clumsy. His choice of soft, grainy imagery over crisp, clear pictures makes the atmosphere oppressive. The set design, art direction and costuming, while impressive, still look numbingly cheap and tawdry. Scenes filmed on location at New York landmarks look like they take place on cramped soundstages. The film is just plain ugly to watch.

Worse, Lumet seems to have directed the actors to perform in a soap opera style that is embarrassingly overwrought: the prevailing mood is of whining self-pity. Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell and Ted Ross get in a few good moments as The Scarecrow, The Tin Woodsman and The Cowardly Lion, but there is not a single honest moment to be found in the performance by Diana Ross. To accommodate Ross, six-year-old Dorothy from the book (played as 13 by 16-year-old Judy Garland in THE WIZARD OF OZ), now is a 24-year-old Harlem kindergarten teacher. At 34-years-old, Ross looks more like she is pushing 50, yet displays the emotional maturity of a three-year-old.

Ross' miscasting is legendary, but her inappropriateness for the role pales in comparison to her actual performance. In rewriting the story for Ross, Joel Schumacher's screenplay changes Dorothy from being a winsome, wide-eyed child to an emotionally unstable adult. In Ross' dubious hands the character seems both mentally and emotionally retarded, yet she somehow manages to avoid making the character in any way sympathetic. Strident, always on the verge of hysterics, it is, simply put, one of the all time worst screen performances.

Richard Pryor fares little better. Instead of the lovable charlatan played by Frank Morgan in the 1939 version of the story, the Wizard is now a cowering little fraud, devoid of wit or charm. Why hire Pryor, known for his bravado and cocky attitude, then make him play against type? The filmmakers decided that this Wizard did not just have to be exposed as an illusion, but had to be humiliated and degraded as well. The scenes where Dorothy confronts and belittles The Wiz illustrate the mean-spirited cruelty that permeates the entire film.

The most curious aspect of THE WIZ is trying to decipher just who it was intended for. Obviously, the material was meant to appeal to children, thus it's strangely inappropriate "G" rating; yet the mystical, magical land of good and evil from earlier versions is transformed into a foreboding world of terror and despair. Oz seems to be an extended slum, populated by the homeless, vandals, hookers, bookies, druggies, various street people and gangs; while the Emerald City is a superficial place for shallow, pretentious phonies. While the tone of the film is juvenile -- almost infantile -- it all takes place in a seedy adult world that is almost prurient.

THE WIZ doesn't just avoid childlike innocence, it seems to hold it in contempt. Garland's Oz was basically a beautiful place where evil could be conquered with intellect, compassion, courage and the security of family and friends. The Oz that Ross treks through is basically an evil place; the message she learns is that the world stinks, so stop your whining and get used to it. The "there's no place like home" moral remains intact, but that has little meaning if the alternative -- Oz -- is seen as corrupt and evil.

In THE WIZARD OF OZ, Dorothy's Oz is a dream world version of her own life; the Witch, the Wizard and her traveling companions all have human counterparts. This makes the 1939 film a personal story. In THE WIZ, there is no apparent correlation between Oz and Dorothy's seemingly isolated home life, the people of Oz and Dorothy's family have no counterparts. Garland's Dorothy escapes to Oz, but realizes the best part of Oz is already part of her. Ross' Dorothy fears Oz and ultimately escapes from it. The inner dream world of Oz becomes an alien world of media-generated stereotypes. THE WIZARD OF OZ is a fantasy; THE WIZ is a horror story.

Obviously reworking the basic story to accommodate an all-black cast wasn't done just to utilize a different style of music. As such, the film becomes a showcase for a panorama of African-American stereotypes, many of them negative. But rather than debunking racist clichés, the film embraces them. Sleep inducing poppy fields are replaced with opium dens, witches become sweatshop slave drivers, flying monkeys are gang members, Munchkins are graffiti vandals and so on and so forth. As adult satire, such imagery is understandable, if lame, but the film forgets this is still a story specifically aimed at children. Just as the film was rewritten from the play to accommodate the adult Ross, the material is altered from L. Frank Baum's books to make it adult, but not mature. It seems to be the film's conviction that to tell the story from a black perspective it must embrace a grim urban reality, basically saying that childlike innocence cannot exist because urban living, especially for a black audience, has destroyed such a concept. A sad commentary for a children's fantasy and an even sadder assumption about African-American life.

The irony of THE WIZ is that it is ill-conceived, cheaply melodramatic and relies on trite stereotypes; in other words, it has no brain, no heart and no courage. And ultimately it found no home, being a box office flop. And what could have been a breakthrough landmark in cinema ends up being a sad relic of political incorrectness.

What one must understand is ... what a wonderful play "The Wiz" was on Broadway. At the time, a tiny little teen with a LARGE voice named Stephanie Mills took this play by the hand and made it spectacular. You had to have seen it in New York back then -- and I did -- when I was a kid.

Then came this movie. A stage to screen adaptation of the play that has a few good moments (all by supporting cast) but was brought down by the casting of Diana Ross as Dorothy. While this may make all Diana Ross "fans" angry - understand one key thing: Miss Ross was too old to play this Dorothy. There were plenty of those at the time who felt that way -- and when I finally saw this movie, I have to 100% agree.

I do remember the 'gossip mill' of this this like it was yesterday:

Stephanie Mills, the original Dorothy from the stage, was considered to do the screen version and Miss Ross was tapped to play the Good Witch at the end (the part Lena Horne finally did.) If this casting took off, the film would have been a nice bow to the stage version and the Dorothy 'part' would have been the young teen she was meant to be. Even if Miss Mills was found not to be "box office" enough (shrugg!!!), there were plenty of teens at that time to handle the part - and me it IS important to have Dorothy in The Wiz portrayed as such a young, inexperienced, wide eyed teen in the ghetto learning these things.

But..and this is according to the gossip mills of that time...Miss Ross wanted the part of DOROTHY so bad and she pulled her weight and clout...said she could "get" Michael Jackson (whom at that time was a hot teen singer himself!) to whom they were VERY interested in casting. The rumor was Miss Ross said in essence, no Dorothy for her, no Michael for you. And that would leave the executives, who thought Michael would be a box office draw, in a quandary. So here we have, what we have.

Whether this is true or not is for you to decide. But as I watch this, there has to be a bit of truth for it does pain me to see Miss Ross as the young ghetto Dorothy. Every time there's a close up, interaction of the part to the adults or dance number, you can tell. Be honest. We're not talking about a Shirley Temple vs. a Judy Garland age thing that actually worked, it was a baby New Year vs. Methuselah on screen thing. Fan of Miss Ross or not - and I am a fan - just not for this. This was/should have been Stephanie's debut movie role, and it would have been nice.

And not just to zero in on Miss Ross' casting, there could have been a few other changes as well that would have made this kinda fun as well...such as Nipsy Russell's Tim Man was good, but putting Richard Pryor there would have been a riot -- and letting Nipsy be...The Wiz instead. As I've said, there are other roles that were wonderful here - (Oh, Evilene!!!) and Lena Horne as the Good Witch are a delight to see nevertheless.

For now on, films that I give a three star rating or under don't get a long, detailed review from me anymore. I'll just breakdown in simple text the many reasons why the film was a steaming pile to me in my humble opinion.

The vision: It was too dark and creepy. The cast: Michael Jackson was the only "okay" one. The rest were poorly cast. The acting: This one beat the original at being way over the top. Art Production: Too colorful with no creativity. Our Heroes: Michael Jackson's stuffed life vest. The lion looked like my high school mascot. The "Tin Man" should have been called the "Junk Man." Diana Ross look TOO old and haggard to even play a 30 year old teacher, let alone a 24 year old one. The choreography: the film's scale couldn't keep up with it in some scenes. And in others, it was way too underdone, slow and tedious to watch. The costumes: Most of the time, I didn't know if I was watching a Jim Henson production or something else. The bad guys: The wicked witch was horrendous, straight from the depths of anyone's worst nightmare. She died too easily and she was a complete idiot. The resolution: Rushed, unsatisfying, completely missing the point of the original book's message. Oz: It was ugly. The Wiz: A laughable cartoon. The subway scenes: Way too hellish. Columns breaking from ceilings with the Medusa hair thing going on, the orange creatures chasing our heroes, growing bigger on every step.

Wasn't this film made for children?

The best thing was the music but that's not enough for me to like this film at the least bit.