Saturday, June 06, 2020

Movie review - "Oz" (1976) **1/2

A movie that's very endearing in its seventies-ness, with windswept roads, panel vans, short shorts, Ross Wilson soundtrack, glam rock finale, groupie hero. It has a very clever central idea, an updating of the Wizard of Oz -an idea that really could havee taken off with a bigger budget and script. I think it could have been a great musical.

I'll be honest I'm not overly wild about it - too ambling. And Gary Waddell and Michael Carman - actors I really like - play characters who are super offensive for too long. At the end they're nice to Dorothy and the camraderie kicks in and I thought "that's what the film should be" - it came a little late. The villain isn't very good.

Still, to take a walk on the sunny side... Bruce Spence has charm as the surfy afraid of water (alas, the budget doesn't let us see that) and Joy Dunstan is engaging as Dorothy.  The tunes are nice. I liked actors playing multiple parts.

This wasn't an inherently low budget idea - I so wish they'd had a bit more time and money to do it justice.


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