Directed by Sam Raimi
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Saying that this expensive prequel to The Wizard of Oz has its heart in the right place “isn’t the same thing as saying it’s actually good,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Designed to play like an old-fashioned family-friendly Hollywood adventure, it’s instead “a lumbering, bloated spectacle” weighed down by a weak script and “a flat, awkward central performance.” James Franco stars as a two-bit magician who’s greeted as a savior when a tornado lifts him over the rainbow to the magical land of Oz, and the actor “never finds a way to make the wizard pop,” said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. In fact, once a flying monkey and a talking doll join him on his journey, he “looks pretty pained in most of his scenes with them.” Worse, though, is what’s become of Oz’s heroines, said Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. Dorothy’s been excised from this story completely, of course, while the three ruling witches—played by Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams—are cast as “wide-eyed weaklings,” helpless without a man. “It’s depressing to watch.”
-
Should you add your child to your credit card?The Explainer You can make them an authorized user on your account in order to help them build credit
-
Cracker Barrel crackup: How the culture wars are upending corporate brandingIn the Spotlight Is it 'woke' to leave nostalgia behind?
-
'It's hard to discern what it actually means'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
