As I plan on being drunk tonight ushering a coworker off to other pastures, I will pen something not about Japan because I don't have access to my photo stores. So, instead, I'll review a movie I watched on the flight back, namely Oz the Great and Powerful.

Set as a prequel to the original Oz story line, this movie sets about trying to fill in how the titular "Wizard" came to his position. And, for that, it's mostly satisfying. They do an alright job of brings all the ends together into a mostly believable state to go into the original 1939 movie.

It's a pity that pretty much everything else about the movies sucks.

First of all is the gratuitous use of shitty ass CGI. I was watching this movie embedded into the back of an airplane seat on a shitty LCD and it still looked shitty. The biggest offense was during wide shots that involved characters running over some sort of terrain, weaving in and out of being actual humans and digital doubles. The movement of the latter was so unbelievably bad that I had to make sure that I was still in the year 2013 and not ten years prior. Basically anytime there was a human interacting with something digital, it was bad; actors obviously interacting with nothing, sketchy physics, and bad matte paintings. For a movie made on the budget that this had and as late in the CGI game as we are, this is all very disheartening.

Next up on the bitch list was the stupid tie ins to the original movie. The opening of the film is all black and white and then converts to color (and WIDESCREEN) once Oz comes into the picture. Perhaps Kansas is really black and white. I'll have to go there again sometime. The cowardly lion (kind of) makes an appearance? The poppy field is used as a major plot device at approximately the same point in the movie and, finally, the wizard doles out the goods, as it were, to all the wayward adventurers, imparting upon them his words of wisdom... words which he should not be imparting because he's a self-absorbed, playboy asshole.

Finally, and most importantly, are the characters and the actors' portrayal of them. As previously stated, Oz (James Franco) is a conman and an asshole and never really does anything to redeem himself of these labels. If anything, by the end, these are reinforced and encouraged. Franco's portrayal is fine for the character, and I had no issues with it.

No, the really fucked up character was the one portrayed by Mila Kunis, the would be Wicked Witch of the West. Or, as she's portrayed in this film, the Naughty Stripper Witch of the West. The character is all over the place in terms of personality. At first she seems pretty reasonable and then suddenly goes angsty teenager on super 'roids. There was no real, solid reason for this change. It just happened. Suddenly, Kunis is screaming everything in the most annoying way imaginable making her an absolutely despicable character, but not in a good way. She deserves at least one Razzie for this performance, also the guys who wrote the dialog.

Even still, despite it's glaring flaws, it managed to entertain me for a couple hours on my long flight back, and for that I'll give it...

2/5 stars