In his Evil Dead films, Sam Raimi’s camera careens around those cursed woods like a mad dog let off its leash. The mind reels at the Emerald City and enchanted forests that Sam Raimi might have conjured with a 3D camera, but unfortunately those images remain in the mind. There are a few glimpses of the Raimi of old – a piece of picket fence flying towards James Franco’s hot-air balloon or a witch resembling something out of the basement of Whedon's cabin in the woods – but for the most part, this Oz bears an unfortunate resemblance to Tim Burton’s vision of Wonderland, down to its ponderous Danny Elfman score. Both bloat the familiar landscapes of childhood into eye-achingly candy-colored battlegrounds, trading whimsy for action and heart for explosions. This Disney-produced prequel traces the arrival of the Wizard, aka Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a Kansas flim-flam man with outsized ambitions. The three witches – Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams – are more interesting characters, but their fates are circumscribed by the well-known original, and they’re mostly left to glower and shoot finger-sparks at one another. Franco is a slyly eccentric actor who constantly subverts his leading-man looks; where Robert Downey, Jr. (the first actor approached for the role) excels at self-interested con men who gradually succumb to their better natures, Franco always seems on the verge of bursting into mocking laughter at the inauthenticity of it all. His casting is deadly to the digitally concocted fantasy world, at which his eyes appear to roll, not marvel.
