This is a movie based on "The Wizard of Oz"... not a remake, a re-imagining. It was a three part special on the Sci-Fi channel in the good ol' U S of A. So I will start by saying this, wow is this a complete perversion of the "Wizard of Oz", and I mean that in the best possible way. Serious. Watching the absolute off the wall insanity that is "Tin Man" is something of a guilty pleasure. The plot goes a little something like this, DG (otherwise known as Dorthy Gale version 2.0) gets sucked into the "O.Z." after the wicked witch Queen of the whatever sends her goons in a transportation tornado to collect her. When she arrives in OZ she finds what I believe are Indian/munchkins. Then she meets "Glitch", a wack job that had his brain removed by the queen. Then they meet up with a man, held prisoner by a giant suit of armor thing, that turns out to be a cop, and cops in OZ are called "Tin men". You follow? No? Its okay. I wouldn't either if I hadn't watched the damn thing. Ok so other than that they meet a creature future seer guy called "Raw" (your cowardly lion stand in), together they set out to solve the riddles of DG, and save OZ.
Along the way meeting robots, magic, and Richard Dreyfus (in a wondrous and all too short appearance) as a stoned Wizard... oh you see what I mean by perversion. Let us move on.
I enjoyed this adventure. The effects are not great, pretty standard TV level, and better effects would have helped, but there were still a few cool Ooooo's and Ahhhh's. The story moved me from hate to love to annoyed as crap with the acting abilities of the lead, to liking her in the end. I don't know, it was all over the map. However one thing I can say for sure, I enjoyed the absolute, unrestrained, creativity, when challenging a beloved classic. You can tell they got the green light and rolled with it, almost making it as out of control insanity as possible.
I love my fantasy adventures, and though this in no way deserves to be in the top whatever in that category (mostly due to the acting and writing) it is a fun romp through the imagination. Do not hold this against the original OZ, it is not meant to be taken as a remake, it's an entirely new story, even... and I do try to avoid spoilers... dropping a few ties (in a very unexpected moment) to the original.
So enjoy it for what it is, crazy dumb fun. The one thing that just bugged me beyond reason, everyone constantly referring to OZ as the O-Z. No matter how I tried to avoid it, it sounded like the O-C to me... maybe they thought it was hip. Hipness revoked, just annoying. But get past that you might have some silly fun.
Movie scale 2.5 stars out of 5 stars
fantasy scale 2.5 out of 5 stars
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