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Good start, but then it gets ruined

An Exercise In Nonsense

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I had to vote it a 1, but if I could've, I would've given it a zero or negative rating. I just watched it on HBO and I was intrigued to see a Michael Jackson and Diana Ross version of the Wizard of Oz, since I'm a fan of their music. The original movie is one I grew up with and have seen many times, and is a timeless classic, even though it is ancient. I had also seen the latest movie Oz, in the movie theaters, and while nowhere near as good as the original movie, it was at least interesting. This one? Horrific. Terrible acting. Terrible costumes. Terrible music. There was not one single redeeming quality about this movie it was so bad. I think the only possible way this movie could have gotten any positive reviews was black people simply liking it because it was all black. The downgrade in acting by every single character, relative to the original, was mind boggling. Save yourself the time and if you bothered to DVR it, delete it.

There are some moments in the movie version of "The Wiz" that are truly magical, but the truth of the matter is that it was not a wise idea to make Dorothy a 30-something Harlem school-teacher who is swept away during a snowstorm (along with her dog Toto) and taken to the Land of Oz where the entire city of New York is transformed into her own nightmare as an analogy of her pathetic life. That is a betrayal of L. Frank Baum's original novel and to the musical version where Stephanie Mills' Dorothy was still a little girl and things that scared her about her city were used to make her learn to be unafraid. Ego and pretentiousness became abundantly clear in a film that lead its leading lady to a film career stand-still and helped to kill the movie musical for the second time in a decade.Fairly recent box office flops and disasters at that time like "Paint Your Wagon", "Hello, Dolly!" and "Man of LaMancha" had made producers truly afraid of making movie musicals, but they had begun to creep out as the 1970's wrapped up. "Grease" was a box-office triumph; "Hair" took on a cult following, and the cast of "The Pirates of Penzance" would turn their surprise hit into a cheery film that may have come and gone at the time, but is a faithful rendition. For each of those (and the wonderful "Little Shop of Horrors") came "The Wiz", "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", a misguided "Annie" and a poorly directed "A Chorus Line" that would pretty much end the Broadway musical on film craze until years later when "Evita", "Chicago" and "Dreamgirls" came along to bring it to what we have today.In the case of "The Wiz", there is an amazing talent behind the scenes, and certainly seeing a subway station come to life, the lion of the New York Public Library break out of its concrete cage, and various bridges and sky-scrapers utilized for the setting of Oz. Diana Ross maybe miscast, but oh, she can sing, and her dancing is credible as well. Toss in her Motown pal Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow (just beginning to break in as an adult performer) and you see the start of his successful music video career. Nipsey Russell is the shining star of Dorothy's pals, his Tin-Man very funny as he sings "Slide Some Oil to Me". Ted Ross gets to repeat the role of the lion with proper gusto, and he spoofs the characterization of rough and tough city folk who in real life are either cowards or pussy-cats.Lena Horne is a glamorous Glinda, her "Believe in Yourself" the triumph of the film, showing her to still be beautiful and a strong performer years after barely making waves at MGM. Mabel King is an imperious Evilene, her "No Bad News" a true show-stopper. "Brand New Day" tends to go on a bit too long, however, and leads to the confrontation with the titled Wiz, played with comical poppycock by Richard Pryor who seemed to be maligned at the time but actually brings back the spirit of the book's character. Theresa Merritt as Dorothy's Aunt and Thelma Carpenter as Miss One ("Witch of the South") also add spark, with Carpenter really making me crack up about the dead Witch of the East "She put the Ug in Ugly".So while it is easy to dismiss this as a flop of its time (and there are justified reasons to do so), there's a lot to love. I used to refer to this as "Cheese Wiz", but to look back at it and see the art inside it and what is good, I can truly rate this a bit higher than I did in my mid adult years, yet not as high as I did when I first saw this in the theater as a teenager.

Toto, I don't think we're in Harlem anymore. I think it's supposed to be Kansas, Joel Schumacher. This isn't a batman credit card, Joel. It's the Wizard of Oz. One movie that should have never been remade at all, at less, not in this way. The Wiz takes the source material and rewrites most of it. What a joke! This movie will angry both fans of the book as well of fans of the original 1939 film. It's kind of stupid in their attempt to urbanize it when the staged version of the Wiz had Dorothy in Kansas. The Wiz Broadway play was a bit better than this movie because of one reason. The stage version of the Wiz was big and well, pretty. The cinematography is pretty terrible. This movie looks like a nuclear war devastated wasteland of New York City. Dorothy (Diana Ross), a 30 year old African American kindergarten teacher leaves a large family dinner one night to chase after her dog during a New York City snowstorm and gets swept up by a cyclone. Rather than having bright colors, this version is mostly dark and gloomy. First off, Diana Ross is still old to play Dorothy. Dorothy is a preteen girl, not a middle age woman. Another thing annoying is that Dorothy afraid of everything. She so introverted, crying and whining, it's hard to watch. The first song doesn't have the same positive attitude as the song, somewhere over the Rainbow. It's more like somewhere over my black storm cloud of depression. Most of the songs here are depressing mediocre, and this was Motown known for catchy hits. Dorothy goes to see the Wiz to get home by walking the yellow brick road. She meets up with the Scarecrow (Michael Jackson) who just finish singing with the crows from Dumbo with the song You Can't Win, You Can't Break Even. I just can't believe they had Michael Jackson, and he barely danced in it. So sad, all that talent, wasted. They didn't do any better with the song 'Ease down the road' with the awful camera direction. It was a good song, but lastly badly done. All you see is their backs in a far view camera pose. There is a lot of wide shots in this film that get worst and worst. They then meet up with the Tin Man (Nipsey Russell) who sing like an awful William Shatner with the song What Would I Do If I Could Feel. Then the story follow up with them meeting the Cowardly Lion (Ted Ross). All of them make it to the Wizard (Richard Pryor) who tells them to kill the Wicked Witch (Mabel King). Rather than poppy fields, we get showgirls tossing angel dust drugs at our heroes. Rather than flying monkeys, we get biker monkeys, and trash cans with teeth. Honestly, it miss the message of the Wizard by skipping out the reasons why they wish to see the wizard. The lion in this film shows more courage, the scarecrow showing more insight and the tin woodsman showing more heart than their 1930's counterparts. Honestly the 1930's Wizard of Oz isn't like the book too. The Tin Man was a bit a flaming narcissist, Scarecrow was an annoying know-it-all and the Lion was a bully. Dorothy was annoying shrew of a girl in the earlier books. She was very insistent, never wrong about anything, quick to disagree, pushy, and rude. In latter books she becomes more tame and demure bland, but still has her moments. Still, the Wizard of Oz is more open to a wider audience, and has the optimism charm that makes it popular. This movie is negatively a downer. The Oz sets looks like the dump, a lot of the songs are not memorable, lot of the songs from the play is missing, and some of them are not even in the play at all. The characters are not as funny as the Judy Garland version and lastly, the movie butcher the source material. I'm like the Tin Man, I have no heart for this movie.

An overstuffed movie musical and a major blunder by the great Sidney Lumet. This urbanized version of THE WIZARD OF OZ stars a far too old Diana Ross as Dorothy, an inner city school teacher whisked off to a very late 1970s fantasy land (which looks like a disco-fied Manhattan)...she encounters a scarecrow (Michael Jackson), a lion (Ted Ross) and a tin man (Nipsey Russell). There's very little fantasy in this monstrosity and what should have been an enjoyable experience is in fact a lumbering bore. Ross, who proved her acting mettle with LADY SINGS THE BLUES is miscast to the point of distraction. This pretty much ended her movie career. The usually enjoyable Richard Pryor plays "the Wiz" as a bumbling fool. Nevertheless, the film is not without merit. A big plus is a couple of the musical numbers. Michael Jackson is dynamite as the scarecrow and as "Evillene", Mabel King performs the show-stopping "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News." The stunning cinematography by Oswald Morris earned an Oscar nomination.