Sam Raimi's prequel to the Wizard of Oz hits theaters this weekend, but critics weren't exactly swept up and blown away by it. While few really hated Oz the Great and Powerful, few loved it either, and most concluding James Franco was a poor choice for the lead. Here's what people are saying:
- The movie makes "an honest effort to capture the family-movie spirit of old Hollywood," writes Alex O'Hehir at Salon. But it winds up feeling like "a lumbering, bloated spectacle," with no real point and a badly miscast lead in Franco. "I can tell he made all sorts of acting-school decisions about this character, but I don’t think we needed his introspective, discount-Brando act when it came to playing the Wizard of freakin’ Oz."