I hated this movie growing up, and that stayed with me until adulthood. Then, I watched it recently. Yes, it's dark and I think it's a mistake thinking this works for most children, but as a rather quirky grown up, I saw it differently. No I don't LOVE it, but I see it's specialness and the many things that made it an unique film. It also shows many strange and dark things that are in the books! So no use saying they took liberties. Not really.
I wonder if people would've compared this to the MGM movie as much had Murch chosen to leave Dorothy out and instead have Tip or another protagonist (Trot/Cap'n Bill, Ojo, Woot the Wanderer, etc.)?
i think the movie was amazing..it does have a dark side to it..but its better without the singing and dancing and getting more serious as to what would have happened to dorothy after she comes home from oz the first time
It should had been released in October than summer! Bad? It’s a damn fun movie with spooky and well done. Good story and pacing and great special effects.
We're the film went wrong, was having the Ruby Slippers instead of the original Silver Shoes since Return to Oz was so determined to be "faithful" to what Baum envisioned. Just made it even more confusing...
I think I still have a few reviews on VHS that aired in the L.A. area when Return to Oz came out. One of them was by Robert Osborne who, in my opinion, was better at hosting movies for Turner's channel. Of course, these were negative. I never trusted reviewers.
It would've helped if Disney had followed through on their plan to avoid comparisons to the MGM movie when publicizing this version, but it's still lazy thinking, IMO, that these reviewers automatically had to compare the two. They could've just warned people not to take small children and criticize Disney's publicity for misrepresenting the film. These reviews show no insight on the reviewers' part. It looks like they're targeting the lowest common denominator.
