Sam Raimi's Wickedly Divisive Wizard Of Oz Film Is Streaming On Disney+

Contrary to what newcomers might (understandably) assume, director Sam Raimi's 2013 Disney fantasy feature "Oz the Great and Powerful" is not the Mouse House's answer to "Wicked." (That would be "Maleficent.") No doubt, the studio was clued into the "Wizard of Oz"-inspired novel turned stage musical's record-breaking success (it had premiered on Broadway about a decade earlier) and would have loved to snag the film rights. Universal, however, had roundly beaten Disney to the punch in that race, so The House That Mickey Built had to find another way to tap into the Oz fever of the 2010s.

Speaking of which, it's easy to forget just how many Oz projects were in the works back when Raimi's film came together. Many of these ventures fell by the wayside (like "Surrender Dorothy," a movie about Dorothy Gale's great, great granddaughter that had Drew Barrymore attached to direct and sounded intriguing), while others came and went without leaving much of an impression (like the animated 2013 musical "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return," a film that it turns out I didn't hallucinate watching in a theater). As for "Oz the Great and Powerful," it somehow wound up grossing almost half a billion dollars in theaters, largely by tapping into the post-"Avatar" 3D demand that was still fervent at that point.

Nowadays, you can stream Raimi's Oz adventure on Disney+, but is it worth your time? Personally, I'm one of those weirdos who adores the nightmare fuel that is Disney's other Oz picture, "Return to Oz," a film that only made a tiny fraction of what "Oz the Great and Powerful" did at the box office. More curious still, if you look at the movie's 56 percent freshness and audience Rotten Tomatoes scores, it appears people are divided on Raimi's flick. But why?

/Film's review put it best when it called "Oz the Great and Powerful" a "Sam Raimi movie wrapped inside a Disney movie." The film stars James Franco as Oscar Diggs, a con artist and magician in early 20th century Kansas who inadvertently ends up somewhere over the rainbow and, before he knows it, in the midst of a power struggle between the warring witches of Oz. Oscar is a scoundrel and a bit of a lothario, but he's got a decent heart (as opposed to being an alleged sex pest like Franco) — so, as much as he initially makes a mess of things, he eventually cleans up his act.

If a Sam Raimi fantasy adventure about a charming jerk saving the day rings a bell, it's because "Oz the Great and Powerful" absolutely resembles a family-friendly riff on "Army of Darkness" ... sometimes. Unfortunately, Raimi is also saddled with a script that largely functions as an extremely tedious "Wizard of Oz" prequel. Hence, for every anarchic, creepy moment where the film plays like a PG-rated "Evil Dead" movie, there's another that fleshes out the backstories for various well-known Ozians in painfully uninteresting, studio committee-sanctioned ways. (This film's take on the Wicked Witch of the West's origins, in particular, is eye-rollingly sexist.) Basically, "Oz the Great and Powerful" is what its detractors accuse "Wicked" of being.

Nifty technical flourishes aside (like the way it replicates the color tone and aspect ratio shifts of 1939's "The Wizard of Oz," but with modern CGI and 3D), "Oz the Great and Powerful" too often looks and feels impersonal. If it wasn't for the scenes where Raimi giddily wrestles back control of the film, it's hard to imagine anyone would remember it at all.