Movie Review: The Wiz

Hey everyone! In honor of my birthday, I have a special birthday post for you—well, special in that I'm done with The Wizard of Oz and am moving on to...well, a another version of The Wizard of Oz. Oh well, hopefully the review is interesting! It's pretty long, but I had a lot to say about this one. In any case, on to our movie review...

The Wiz is a 1978 movie based on a Broadway musical of the same name; both are an African-American retelling of the story of The Wizard of Oz. The movie has quite a star-studded cast—Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, Richard Pryor as the Wizard, and Lena Horne as Glinda, to name a few. I myself am about as white as you can get, but my mother has been in an African-American gospel choir since I was four years old, and I attended the choir's concerts throughout my childhood. Although I'm currently on hiatus from it, I sang in the same choir for six years as an adult. So I have a little bit of background in African-American music, and I was very interested to see how this adaptation would tell the story, especially given the impressive cast.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm an expert on African-American culture—far from it. Instead I merely point out that I have an interest in that aspect of the movie, and some small experience with a small part of African-American culture. In fact, not only am I white, but I live in a very white state. I've never even been to New York City, so I don't have much experience on which to build my understanding of the story's setting. So, you should probably take my opinions with a grain of salt, given where they are coming from. It's very likely that someone who is part of the African-American community would experience this movie in a totally different way than I did, particularly if they were familiar with late 1970s New York. I hadn't even been born when this movie came out, so I'm experiencing a generational gap in addition to the geographical and cultural gaps I already mentioned. Finally, although I was aware of this movie's existence for years, I never got around to watching it till last week. Anything you see as an adult will likely have a very different impact on you than it will if you see it as a child, so this film does not have the same nostalgic value for me as a lot of other things I plan on reviewing.

Given that the movie stars Diana Ross, we know right away that Dorothy is an adult, not a little girl. She lives with her aunt and uncle and her dog Toto in Harlem, and she teaches elementary school. Her aunt is pressuring her to take a job at a high school, telling her she needs to branch out, see more of the world and stop living inside a shell. This confused me greatly. I take it that the high school is in another part of the city, which is one reason why Aunt Em thinks it would be good for her. Dorothy insists that she likes working with little children, but Aunt Em thinks working with older children would be better for her.

I'd like to take a moment to address the character of Dorothy and how she changes in different versions of The Wizard of Oz. In the original L. Frank Baum book, she doesn't actually grow and change all that much as a result of her experiences. She is an interesting character, but not a very dynamic one. She begins the book as a cheerful, kind, loving little girl, and that's how she ends it. She isn't even especially afraid in the beginning, although she does have her moments of unease and distress. If anything, she develops her sense of wonder and acceptance of the new world around her, and the unique qualities of the people she meets—much as children do in the real world, as a regular part of growing up.

Dorothy in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz is a bit different. As I've mentioned before, she doesn't come across as so precocious because she is being played by a much older girl who is almost an adult herself. In fact, Dorothy starts out almost as a sulky teenager, complaining about her life on the farm and how no one understands her or Toto, and she'd like to leave and go somewhere far away. The story is largely about how she learns to appreciate what she already has, and to accept and love the life that's been given to her. It's actually presenting Oz as a kind of escapism, I think, a place Dorothy visits and loves but ultimately decides is inferior to the real world.

So, how does Dorothy grow and change in The Wiz, and where does she start out? She's timid, almost antisocial and even unpleasant. Although she supposedly teaches elementary school, I suspect her students run her ragged, and I could only imagine how she might try to deal with behavior management in a high school classroom. Which brings us back to the portrayal of teaching and education in this movie. I have a request for writers, whether authors or screenwriters. Please, please, if you are going to make your main character part of a specific profession, at least try to do a little research into that profession! Granted, this is New York in 1978, but I can't imagine it's all that much different from the west coast in 2010 in some ways. Teachers do not generally start at elementary school and move up to high school as a type of career advancement. Aunt Em seems to think that Dorothy stays in her current job because she's comfortable, because it's easy, and because she doesn't have to take risks. High school teaching is not an advancement from elementary school teaching, though. Teachers generally teach a specific age group because that's where they do best—one is not necessarily better than the other.

What I'm getting at, in my mini-rant about my chosen profession, is that it's outrageous to suggest that Dorothy stays in her job at the elementary school solely because it is safe and comfortable. It suggests that there is something wrong with her job. Teaching is a difficult and incredibly worthwhile profession, no matter what age level you work with, and given the challenges involved in being a good teacher, I have a hard time squaring this with Dorothy's timid personality. I know musicals don't generally devote a lot of time to backstory, but I would like a better explanation for her attitude. Maybe her parents died tragically and she has never come to terms with her loss? We'll never know, sadly, and all we're given is that Aunt Em thinks she should really go teach high school in order to become a better person, or something. I'm really not entirely sure what Aunt Em wants.

The movie begins with a rather forgettable musical number while extended family joins them for Thanksgiving dinner. Dorothy is introverted and reserved, retreating to other rooms while Aunt Em coos over babies and showers family members with love, dismissing Dorothy as being shy or having a bad attitude. I know this scene is supposed to show a loving family, but to me it suggests that Dorothy is on the outside because she isn't "good enough" for Aunt Em, while the rest of the family gets the love she withholds from Dorothy. Am I reading too much into this? Probably, but it was my initial impression during the scene.

After dinner, Dorothy is doing dishes when somehow the kitchen door ends up open. Toto sees it and makes a break for it. This is not too surprising to me—I have terriers myself (Westies, which are closely related to Cairns, the type of terrier that plays Toto in both The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz), and they are very curious little dogs who wouldn't hesitate to rush out an open front door to explore. Once they got outside, however, all it would take is one look at the raging blizzard that Toto rushes out into, and my dogs would turn around and go back inside. Just because they're dogs doesn't mean they're stupid! Dorothy rushes out into the snow after Toto and screams wildly for him, something we'd better get used to, because she spends a good portion of the movie doing this. (I can't help but picture Michael from Lost yelling "WAAAAAAALT!!" over and over.)

I was kind of pleased here, because I figured Dorothy would get lost in the snowstorm and end up in Oz. Throughout the book series, Dorothy goes to Oz a number of times, and each time it's a different type of natural disaster that sends her there—earthquakes, storms, etc. So the snowstorm seemed a perfectly reasonable way for her to end up there, except...a tornado comes rushing through the snowy streets of Harlem and sweeps up Dorothy and Toto. You can go ahead and picture me facepalming here. Can we say "unnecessary"?

Since there's no house, Dorothy flies through a lighted Oz symbol, and the Z falls on the Wicked Witch of the East and kills her. Dorothy meanwhile ends up in a sandbox in the middle of an urban playground at night. Graffiti on the walls comes to life, and the Munchkins step out from the walls to do a song and dance and thank her for saving them from the witch's curse. Sadly, Dorothy spends most of the number cowering and shrieking in terror while clutching Toto. The Good Witch of the North shows up—not Glinda!—and introduces herself as Miss One. She has silver numbers in her hair, and her speech is sprinkled with phrases like "cut your losses" and "86ing the Wicked Witch" and other number-related figures of speech. I'm really not entirely sure what she's supposed to represent—Wikipedia claims that she is a numbers runner, someone who runs an illegal lottery in poor neighborhoods. Sounds as good to me as anything else, since this is not something I know a lot about. In any case, she gives Dorothy the Silver Slippers (a mix of the Silver Shoes and Ruby Slippers from the original book and movie respectively) and suggests that she goes to see the Wiz for help, since Miss One's powers only control numbers. She tells Dorothy to follow the Yellow Brick Road, saying it's easy to find, then she and all the Munchkins disappear, leaving Dorothy in a frankly terrifying abandoned playground at night, unable to find this supposedly easy-to-discover road, wailing piteously for help. (It takes her an annoyingly long time to stop doing this every few seconds.)

Eventually Dorothy finds the Scarecrow in a very tiny cornfield, at the base of an abandoned and ruined urban building. He is harassed by crows who refuse to help him down and tell him he is better off where he is, because no matter how he tries, he will never get anywhere in life. The meaning of this, at least, is all too easy to figure out (I'm picturing Film Brain dramatically yelling, "Symbolism!!"). There's a completely unnecessary musical number that repeats the conversation the Scarecrow just had with the crows, and then Dorothy steps in to help him down. (Hint: when your musical numbers can be taken out and not damage the plot at all, you know you're doing something wrong.)

Can we talk about costuming for a minute? Dorothy spends the entire movie in a shapeless and colorless dress that's either supposed to be gray or very pale lavender. It's not at all flattering on her. Granted, it may just be the style of the era in which the movie was made, but I still don't think Dorothy's costume does anything but make her look washed out visually as well as emotionally. The Scarecrow is Michael Jackson, before the days of his radical experiments with plastic surgery, back when he was actually an extremely handsome man—but they've managed to completely obliterate all of his good looks by giving him a costume that makes him look clumsy, fat, and lumpy. Yes, he is a scarecrow, but Ray Bolger managed to pull this off by being all over the place and clumsy, yet still somehow dashing and debonair. Michael Jackson's Scarecrow is just pitiful. He wants to do great things and values intelligence, as you can tell by the way he pulls strips of paper from his stuffing and reads great literary quotes from them (he's stuffed with garbage instead of straw, apparently), but he doesn't actually seem to have much of that intelligence we're supposed to see even before he gets his brains. He does come up with an occasional idea, and he's the one who eventually finds the Yellow Brick Road (which is far harder than it should have been), but at the end of the movie, Dorothy actually has to point this out to him. In the 1939 film and the original book, no one ever pointed out all the things the Scarecrow did to prove that he's actually fairly smart already. Even Baum's young readers were expected to be able to pick up on that without having it explicitly explained, but for some reason The Wiz doesn't think we're capable of seeing it. Maybe we're not—the Scarecrow's moments of brilliance are far less impressive in The Wiz.

The Tin Man is discovered in the wreckage of an old amusement park, a sort of mechanical carny. I actually sort of like him. His mannerisms are unusual but clever, and he makes the character rather appealing. Some moments are better than others (the crying scene is awful), but overall I like his portrayal of the Tin Man better than Michael Jackson's Scarecrow. (Michael Jackson was such a talented musician and performer, it's just sad that we never see any of that in this movie.)

The Cowardly Lion they discover inside a lion statue outside a library. He's another character I like, and I think they did reasonably well with his introduction. Soon after they meet him, they follow the Yellow Brick Road down into an abandoned subway, where they are accosted by a peddler who attacks them with inhuman looking puppets that grow to a huge size and then start attacking them all. Why? We never find out who the peddler is, who sent him (if anyone), or why he wants to hurt them. A gate swings shut on the group, all except the Lion, who got out first and now runs back to help everyone. We are treated to a long scene of him saving the others from various dangers using bad special effects. Subway pillars break loose and lurch toward Dorothy, who stands there screaming while they aimlessly mill around her. A fuse box attempts to electrocute the Tin Man, but the Lion punches it into submission. It's all very overdone and obvious, while the special effects are underwhelming and the setting just overall very weird. If I'd seen this as a kid, the scene would have given me nightmares. As an adult, it's just strange. After the Lion has proved his bravery in the most anvilicious way possible, they move on to the next area, waltzing into a red light district. The "Poppy Girls" blow glittery dust into Dorothy and the Lion's faces and send them to sleep. The Scarecrow and Tin Man drag them to a rooftop, and the Tin Man cries on them to wake them up. (Why does this work? And why doesn't it cause him to rust? Wouldn't shaking them have worked just as well?) Don't even get me started on the levels of wrongness involved in putting prostitutes into one my favorite childhood stories.

Once inside the Emerald City, they find a series of impressively dressed citizens, dancing and singing about how stylish the color green is. Periodically, the Wizard's voice will come onto a loudspeaker and announce that he's changed his mind, and a new color is now in vogue, at which point the lights and costumes will change to the new color, and the citizens start singing about it instead. Obviously they represent rich people who are only concerned with the latest fad. The Emerald City has a dark background lit by the spotlights and the sparkling costumes worn by its people, but the place actually seems very depressing nonetheless. It's made out to be superficial and silly. On the contrary, in the book when it's revealed that the spectacles that made everything green were hiding the truth, it turns out that the truth is just as beautiful if not more so, and people are happy whether or not their city is completely green. In the 1939 movie, all the citizens of the Emerald City are genuinely happy, joyful people, and their clothes are an expression of that joy. By contrast, the Emerald City in The Wiz is not really an Emerald City at all.

Somehow the Wiz knows that Dorothy is there and has the Silver Slippers—how, we don't know. He demands that she come to see him, but won't allow the others to come until she says she won't appear before him without them. The giant head that greets them is motionless and entirely made of polished metal, spitting gouts of fire periodically. He demands, of course, that Dorothy and her friends kill the Wicked Witch of the West, although here her name is Evillene. (I have to give some small credit, because Evillene and the Wicked Witch of the East, Evermean, have somewhat creative names.) As they leave, the camera focuses in on the metal head's eye, where we can see Richard Pryor peeking out. Although anyone familiar with the story already knows that someone's behind there, it kind of feels like a cheat to have this shown to us so early on.

We cut to an underground sweatshop that Evillene runs, with a number of misshapen slaves chained up and forced to labor endlessly without a break. Evillene herself is a fat woman dressed in a lumpy gown that looks like a number of red and orange birds exploded all over her, and then someone sprinkled the result with sequins. She cracks a whip and is generally mean, then suddenly declares that Dorothy and her friends are on the way there. How does she know this? We never get an answer. Instead, she calls the Flying Monkeys, which is a motorcycle gang in awful masks, goggles, and leather helmets. Apparently they also smell awful. Actually, they kind of remind me of the Wheelers from Return to Oz crossed with Hell's Angels, and with some masks tossed in to make them look like old-fashioned racial stereotypes, or maybe the neanderthals from the Geico commercials, I'm really not sure.

There's a fairly forgettable chase scene, and the Flying Monkeys capture Dorothy and friends and bring them before Evillene. She demands the Silver Slippers, but of course Dorothy says no. I'm not entirely sure why—Miss One said not to take them off till she gets home, but she never told her why, and Evillene proceeds to torture her friends. I'd certainly give them over to her at that point, or at least I'd do something. But no, Dorothy just stands there and cries and wails, as she's been doing for most of the movie. Evillene has her henchman use a buzz saw to split the Scarecrow in two, they use a gigantic press to flatten the Tin Man, and they string the Cowardly Lion up by his tail. All three tell Dorothy not to worry about them, and not to give up the Silver Slippers. Then Evillene threatens to throw Toto into a cauldron filled with fire, and Dorothy loses it and agrees to give up the Silver Slippers. What? You wouldn't give them up to save your friends, but threaten your dog and they're all hers? I guess we can see where you stand now, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion. Too bad for you.

Before Dorothy can actually give up the shoes, though, the Scarecrow gets her attention and tells her to pull the emergency fire alarm. The sprinklers turn on, and Evillene is "allergic to water", so she melts. (Very unconvincingly, I might add. She looks like she's just sliding backward off the cushion she was sitting on. The special effects in 1939 were far more realistic.) Of course, it was actually the Scarecrow who saved the day, so Dorothy gives up what little control over the story she had left. Somehow the sweatshop workers are freed, and they magically repair the Scarecrow and the Tin Man within seconds (they don't show how they do this, of course, they're just standing there good as new all of a sudden). Now it's time for a song and dance number!

The witch's workers peel off their rubbery masks and costumes, and now that we see them close up, they are obviously an even closer example of old racial stereotypes. (In fact, when they found the Tin Man in the amusement park, he was pinned under a giant model of a fat black woman with a kerchief, the "Mammy" style stereotype, or maybe Aunt Jemima.) Once they've removed the ugly stereotypes with their misshapen features, huge lips and noses, and dark skin, we find African-American dancers who would be very beautiful if it weren't for the ridiculous costumes they're wearing underneath. The women wear white cloth bras that look tied on, and that might work, but both men and women are also wearing what can only be described as white diapers. I understand they were going for something simple and loincloth-like, but this looks ridiculous. They are very good dancers and I do enjoy the routine that follows, although an ugly sweatshop is possibly not the best setting for a joyful finale number that is the closest analogue this movie has to "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead!" It's actually a very good song in a lot of ways: it's called "A Brand New Day" and features some very interesting chords and key changes that manage to keep the triumphant, victorious feeling of the song, but it sounds new and different and exciting. It's actually the only song I still find myself humming a few days later. I can hum a few bars of "Ease on Down the Road", but pretty much every other number in the whole movie is completely forgettable.

The Flying Monkeys are super nice now (why, were they Evillene's slaves too? We never find out), and they take Dorothy and her friends back to the Emerald City. They get into the palace through the back entrance and find the Wiz asleep on a rickety old cot. Richard Pryor is a great comic actor, but sadly very underutilized in this role. He's incredibly pathetic, and it turns out he's a failed politician who could never get elected for anything. He came to Oz during a failed campaign stunt and has lived in terror that someone would find out he had no powers, or that Evillene would come and kill him. If Evillene just magically knew that Dorothy and friends were on the way, why did she never know about the Wizard? Maybe she did know and just didn't care? In any case, whereas the Wizard in the 1939 movie was somewhat pathetic but not unhappy with his life in the Emerald City, and the Wizard in the book was actually rather well-loved by the citizens, Richard Pryor's Wizard is completely unimpressive and totally miserable. He doesn't even offer to take Dorothy home in the balloon, although we can clearly see it in the corner of the room. He's utterly useless and only serves as a jumping off point for Dorothy's speech to the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion about how they already have the things they thought they needed so badly—a completely unnecessary speech, I might add, since they've been practically hitting us over the head with a sledgehammer to show how smart the Scarecrow is, how kind the Tin Man is, and how brave the Cowardly Lion is. Dorothy goes into endless specific examples of each and every great thing they've done. But when Richard Pryor asks if there's hope for him, if there's something good inside him that he hasn't discovered yet, Dorothy answers that she doesn't know and he's on his own, good luck with that! Oh, very nice, Dorothy! First you give up something to save your dog that you wouldn't give to save your friends, now you just dismiss a poor, pathetic Richard Pryor who's had a rough time of it. I can't remember the last time I saw a heroine this unlikeable. After Dorothy's speech, Glinda just magically shows up. I give Lena Horne credit for a lovely musical number (although I don't get why she appears in the middle of a starry sky, with little black babies in the middle of stars behind her). After the song, Dorothy clicks her heels three times and finds herself in the street outside her home with Toto, the blizzard now over.

Apparently The Wiz was a box office flop and was panned by critics. If I'd known these things ahead of time, I might not have watched it—although honestly, I don't always trust critics and probably would have watched it anyway, just to see if it was really so bad. My verdict? Yep, it is that bad. I can sit through a lot, especially when it comes to musicals. I love musicals and can forgive a great deal as long as it's fun. The Wiz is not fun. It's dark, unpleasant, and unsatisfying. The symbolism is either completely lacking in subtlety or oddly obscure. The characters change and grow in only superficial ways, if at all, and although the Tin Man and Lion aren't too bad, the Scarecrow and the Wizard are just uncomfortably pathetic. Dorothy is unlikeable and unpleasant throughout the entire movie. If she's not actively singing and dancing, she looks terrified or confused, and although supposedly in her early twenties, she acts far more childish than the original Dorothy ever thought of being. The setting is entirely urban, whereas the original story took place almost entirely in a beautiful countryside. The Land of Oz is supposed to be a wondrous, magical place, but here it's just frightening and depressing. It's as if Dorothy is trying to escape from a bad nightmare the entire time.

I watched this movie with my mom, who had never seen it either, and I think she summed it up best. It is not so much about The Wizard of Oz as it is the African-American experience. It's possible that African-Americans might find a lot more of value in the movie than I did for this reason, particularly at the time the movie came out, but as a diehard Wizard of Oz fan, I strongly disliked it. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself impatiently waiting for the opening musical numbers to end—never a good sign, especially for someone who usually loves musicals.

My advice is to skip this one, unless you are a Wizard of Oz fan who feels you must see every adaptation that is out there, or if you are more interested in the African-American slant to the story. Otherwise, stick with the original book or the 1939 movie—you'll be glad you did!