NOTE: This is not a new review. It was originally published on social media on March 26, 2017.
The history of Oz on film is a long, strange, and rather sad one. Yes, the 1939 film is a beloved classic, but for that one success there are several conspicuous failures: Larry Semon’s infamous 1925 version, Disney’s aborted Rainbow Road to Oz project, the massive financial loss of their later Return to Oz (which at least gained a cult following), and the fleeting success but fundamental mediocrity of 2013’s Oz: The Great and Powerful.
And then there’s The Wiz. The original musical, which hews comparatively close to Baum’s original book, was a massive success, but this film version made a vast array of changes, cost an absurd amount of money ($24 million; Star Wars cost around half of that a year earlier), and was a critical and financial failure, ending for a time the major studios’ interest in making films for black audiences.
Then and now, the film has its defenders, but it’s not hard to see why it failed to connect at the time; it has many worthy elements, but it has just as many miscalculations—within and without the film proper—that keep it from being anywhere near greatness.
A great deal of the blame must lie with director Sidney Lumet, a great director of dark dramas for adult audiences, but with no flair for whimsy. (That a white director was assigned to a project with an all-black cast is its own problem—imagine what (native Kansan) Gordon Parks could’ve done with it.)
Lumet clearly doesn’t know how to direct musical sequences, and Oswald Morris’ (Oscar-nominated!) cinematography does him no favors, keeping much of the action in long shots which reinforce Lumet’s timidity with such uncharacteristic material. There are moments when Lumet’s flair for psychological tension bleeds through; note Dorothy’s overwhelming neurosis in the first half hour, or the Wiz’s pathetic isolation towards the end. I can only assume the children in the audience used the time to fidget.
I’m not sure if Lumet was primarily responsible for the conceit of making the film’s Oz a kind of fantasy vision of New York, but it works only intermittently; visually, it allows for some interesting touches, but dramatically, it undercuts one’s ability to believe in Oz as a coherent world.
Of course, Joel Schumacher’s messy script does so even more completely. Characters are frequently underdeveloped or badly underused, ironic given the film’s bloated running time (134 minutes, half an hour longer than the 1939 film). Mabel King’s Evillene, for example, has about 7 or 8 minutes of screentime, roughly as much time as the song celebrating her defeat (“Can You Feel a Brand New Day?”) takes up. And the Wiz himself amounts to almost nothing—he doesn’t even get to tell Dorothy’s friends how they had brains, a heart, and courage all along. (She does.)
And the story is barely coherent if you’re not already familiar with the material; major plot points are tossed aside in single lines of dialogue or buried under murky cuts, and it’s hard to tell whether the script was rewritten to avoid shooting additional expensive sequences, or if scenes were just ripped out in the editing room to make the whole enterprise less dreadfully overlong.
And then there’s Diana Ross, whose Dorothy is often held up as one of the most notorious pieces of miscasting in Hollywood history. She’s certainly not very good, though the script’s conceit of making Dorothy a shy schoolteacher in her 20s would probably have stymied any actress; not being a New Yorker, you’ll have to pardon my ignorance, but how is it even possible to have never been south of 125th Street? Aunt Em and Uncle Henry never took her to Manhattan, even on a day trip? (Also, Aunt Em tries to persuade Dorothy to give up teaching kindergarten and teach high school instead—don’t those require radically different skill sets?)
In any case, Ross doesn’t make the shy Dorothy of the opening reels a particularly compelling or likable heroine, and if she’s more comfortable with the livelier Dorothy of the last third, she never really inhabits the character, and her big final number feels less like Dorothy coming into her own than Diana belting for a concert audience.
Really, though, isn’t a longing for something more the quintessence of Dorothy? Making her into a meek homebody afraid to live in the world goes against the character’s fundamental nature. Ross would’ve been much more convincing as the pent-up, frustrated, longing Dorothy, and far truer to the original character, so why she was forced into this unsatisfactory conception of the role is all the more baffling.
Her three friends fare rather better. Nipsey Russell’s Tin Man shines best in his first scene, but his sardonic humor and vaudevillian flair are quite enjoyable. Likewise, Michael Jackson (in his only dramatic role of note) never quite tops his opening scene and number (written for the film, no less), but he’s a warm and understated Scarecrow, literally stuffed with aphorisms which he brightly deploys as needed.
The real scene stealer, though, is Ted Ross’ Cowardly Lion; his opening number (“I’m a Mean Ole Lion”) is one of the film’s best, and his mixture of theatrical bluster and chastened pathos is about irresistible; he might actually match or even top Bert Lahr’s iconic Lion—he seems more genuinely feline than Lahr.
King’s Evillene, all too briefly seen, is quite fun, as is Thelma Carpenter’s spacey “Miss One” (essentially the Good Witch of the North). Lena Horne’s Glinda is less satisfactory; though the film’s big star turn, she is basically immobile in an ornate costume, surrounded by unintentionally creepy infantile attendants. Her big number is delivered with gusto, to be sure, but it borders on the hammy.
The physical production is at least somewhat impressive; the expansive sets and colorful costumes were deservedly nominated for Oscars, and Stan Winston’s great makeup would’ve probably won had the category existed at the time.
And the songs, a mix of Charlie Smalls’ original songs from the stage show and a few new pieces, gee mostly quite tuneful and catchy; they’ll never supplant the songs from the ’39 film, but “Ease on Down the Road” and “No Bad News”, among the others I’ve already listed, will certainly stick in your head even as the rest of the film fades in the memory.
Though, some of the more inexplicable choices may linger for a while longer; the oddly erotic second half of “Brand New Day”, with the dancers casting off their grotesque costumes and dancing about at length in, quite literally, their underwear, or the Tin Man’s “wife” Teenie, one of the strangest single…characters (?) I’ve seen in any major studio film.
In the end, The Wiz can’t really be counted as a good film; it’s too uneven, too lacking in real magic, too hamstrung by the writing, the directing, and the overall mishandling of Dorothy to be a satisfying experience in its own right. But it has elements one can appreciate, and for its singular oddness, it’s probably worth at least one viewing. Certainly more so than Oz: The Great and Powerful.
Score: 59
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