As soulless and awful as Alice in Wonderland. Franco and Kunis are terrible. It looks expensive but never feels engaging. Basically a mess all-around.

Completely disagreed. It is miles above Alice in Wonderland, has a nice tribute to science and cinema and Kunis, Weisz and Williams are great in it. The china girl is the film's highlight. It is also a feast for the eyes and the 3D is extremely well-done. The middle section lags a bit and I never completely bought into Franco's character, but the supporting cast more than makes up for that. GREAT fun.

B+/A-

You'll know when you see it.

The china girl was fucking annoying.

I'll admit that the climax, with the aforementioned tribute to science and cinema, is at least somewhat entertaining and compelling. But by that point the film had lost me.

Also, Kunis is the hottest witch I've seen in a while.

You must've been blinded by her looks, because she was awful in this. Especially post-transformation, with that laughable prosthetics job.

I admit the post-transformation effects were bad, but I thought it was CGI. YOu sure those were prosthetics?

Pre-transformation, I thought she was lots of fu.

In that now infamous interview from a few days ago, she said she was wearing prosthetics. In any case, it looked really bad. Especially in 3D.

At first, I really wanted to see this movie once I saw the posters popping up around Disney, but then, as things progressed, it seems more akin to a hybrid of Twilight drama and Burton in Wonderland generic fantasy.

Not sure where the Twilight part is coming from...

I mean I haven't seen the film, so my opinion has very little merit, but from what I've gathered from that otherwise delightful interview with Kunis, a lot of her character is the way she is because of a broken heart, which seems overtly angsty and lacking of any real depth beyond high-school level drama, much of which is the backbone of Twilight. Thus the comparison.

There is good and bad.

The good: it's plenty better than Alice in Wonderland, if only because it looks like Raimi is having fun. His fingerprints are all over this movie, from camera angles to visuals ugly prosthetics (Rachel Weitz at the end of the movie looks like something right out of Army of Darkness). The third act goes off the rails and it's easily the most lively section of the film. He PLAYS with 3D, which nobody ever does these days. Stuff keeps flying out of the screen and it's genuinely enjoyable to watch. If you see this in theaters then by all means pay extra for a 3D ticket. You won't regret it.

Now the bad: this movie is indeed all over the place. The screenplay is deathly dull, and Franco is distractingly bad. It's like he's laughing and grinning the whole time because he can't believe he's acting in front of a greenscreen. So much of the film feels produced- the wisecracking monkey (which was actually a decision Alan Horn made himself) is just the most obvious example- that I was never really surprised, never cared about Oz or any of the other one-dimensional characters.

In short, it's a film brimming with interesting Sam Raimi ideas that are trapped inside a Disney theme park ride. I'll give it a C+

That's what I'm thinking, this film seems overly produced.

I'm going to stop talking now as I have not seen the film.

Decent fun. The monkey had me dying of laughter (and pretty much just me in my theater). And it's definitely better than Alice in Wonderland.

I thought it was a freaking mess. This and Jack are both two of the worst films I've seen this year, unfortunately.

Both this and Jack remind me of Burton's Alice -- a concept film that is more concerned with the way it looks than in telling a story.

Oz, the emerald enshrined antithesis of Kansas, is sent through the Mouse House's Modern Times machine and emerges a mega-budget 3-D franchise bid in which no level of beautiful and deceptive computer generated ado and flash can compensate for the anonymous and not so enchanting heart of a product masquerading as a film, an inferior product daring to draw a line from itself to one of the most beloved films ever produced. The credited architect is none other than Sam Raimi, and it can be declared his least satisfying outing to date without even a second's hesitation. It is sad such a revered director of frightening fantasy films could not do more, much more, when paired with such an iconic world and cast of characters. His most devoted fans may be most alarmed by how unrecognizable the lion's share of his stylistic decisions prove to be, with most of the film indicating the auctorial vision of an inapt in-studio committee trying to replicate Alice in Wonderland (a far superior screen fantasy) and Snow White and the Huntsman. The few moments which are his, including a few distinct camera movements and a climax lifted in part from the third Evil Dead picture, are inorganic to the extreme, their presence perhaps a sign of a jaded director rousing from an extended nap for brief moments on the set of a behemoth of which he has no productive control. Most of the talented cast are hamstrung by their generic and unpleasant roles. The worst is Mila Kunis, miscast beyond logic as cinema's most iconic witch. At its worst, her performance and its blazing failure to capture even a minute percentage of the menace of Margaret Hamilton's achievement is painful. On the other hand, James Franco, as the youthful and future of Wizard of Oz, escapes unharmed. His gigantic, disarming smile and almost serpentine charm serve him well here as a reluctant con artist on a heroic quest, and he is among the few almost saving graces to be found in this destined to be popular dud.

C-

It's a shame that Zach Braff can only get work in movies now as a voice-over for a monkey.

I won't deny that, but both are less boring.

That, I have never understood. Why did he not build on the success of Garden State?

Among the recent run of fairy tale influenced fantasy films, Jack the Giant Slayer is by far the best example of how action, adventure, light humor, and straightforward storytelling should be blended. It has real integrity and verve. SUCH A GOOD MOVIE.

I think the two recent releases make Alice in Wonderland look like a masterpiece.

I mean, he made The High Cost of Living, which is great. And nobody has ever heard of it.

Shhhh! David's listening.