4/10

If i used two words to describe Legends of Oz, it would be “Uninspiring” and “Lazy”. This animation film serves as a sequel to the original classic that transformed color movies on film. That is probably the only similarity that Legends of Oz has with the Judy Garland classic, it’s beautiful to look at. Dorothy (Lea Michele) returns to Oz to save her friends from a derranged clown known as The Jester (Martin Short). Besides this being the first animated Oz film, it just doesn’t feel like an Oz film based on it’s whacky tone of comedy. Just because a film is animated it doesn’t mean that the movie has to be absolutely goofy. One thing i loved about every Oz film so far is that there was that mysterious creepiness involved with every one. Last year’s “OZ:The Great and Powerful” had it in the form of the sister witches casting their spells on OZ with creepy smoke filled visuals. In “The Wizard of Oz”, it had creepy woods filled with an already terrifying Margaret Hamilton as The Witch. Return to OZ…….Well……..the whole movie was creepy. None of that is present with this film. It feels like we are watching a basic animated feature that came out this year. There simply is no charm. Lea Michele did a great job as Dorothy, and her voice is all any casting director should look for when casting the main character hero. She plays through such beautiful songs as “Work With Me”, “One Day” and my personal favorite, “When the World”. The songs are lyrically beautiful giving the film it’s only sense of adventure with the movie. One of my biggest problems with the film is that the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man are such huge characters in the first 20 minutes of the film, but then left on the shelf with the final hour. It’s almost like their characters have to take a backseat to the new Dorothy sidekicks. Those sidekicks include a bird named “Wise”, a china doll named “China Princess”, and an army commander named “Marshall Mallow”. The new characters don’t seem to fit in to the characters we have known and loved. We wish Dorothy would join her original friends, but that time is never seen on camera. My biggest problem with this film is that i question whether Director Dan St-Pierre ever watched the original Wizard of Oz. Toto is a completely different kind of dog and differently colored, Uncle Henry and Aunt EM look NOTHING like the way they did. The funniest thing to me though is that this film is supposed to take place five years after The Wizard of OZ, yet there are fast driving cars and Dorothy hasn’t aged one day. If anything, she looks younger than the teenager that was in The Wizard of Oz. It just all feels too sloppy. I feel bad for fans of a film that becomes as big as The Wizard of Oz did. It means that over a span of 100 years that you will get at least 5 or 6 remakes/sequels and nothing will ever come close to that original magic. I did enjoy last year’s OZ:The Great and Powerful. It restored some of the magic back for Oz fans, but Legends of Oz took that one step forward and added two steps back. When fans of these movies are faced with the choice of staying in or seeing Legends of OZ, most will be forced to conclude that there is no place like home. Not recommended.