By Petra Halbur
Staff Writer

“Oz: The Great and Powerful” is a film that means well but utterly lacks in direction and intelligence. The movie succeeds in some respects, but its shortcomings are too fundamental for the movie to be redeemable.
The movie is a prequel to the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” and, in some respects, to Frank L. Baum’s classic novel. It establishes how Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) becomes the Wizard of Oz, and how Glinda (Michelle Williams) and the Wicked Witch of the West (either Rachel Weisz or Mila Kunis…it’s supposed to be a twist) develop into the characters we know.
The film wanders aimlessly for the first two acts and falls back on that tired plot device of a prophecy foretelling of a male savior, despite the presence of powerful women who seem more than capable of overcoming wickedness by themselves.
The only thing worse than the story is the acting. I don’t know what happened to these high quality stars, but Franco and Kunis are awful. They say their lines in a manner quite cringeworthy, and their romance is devoid of  chemistry. Mercifully, Weisz and Williams enter the film roughly around the midpoint and save Franco and Kunis from themselves.
The second half shows off the film’s greatest strength: the establishment of Oz as the Wizard.
The film effectively makes Oz’s famous retreat behind the curtain a victory rather than a cop-out. In the original story, the Wizard is a liar that deceives the people of the land. Yet here, Oz resorts to this charade to defeat the evil witches. I appreciate that Oz’s knack for illusion, the very thing that marked him as a conman in Kansas, is employed as a weapon against the forces of evil.
However, the screenwriters maxed out their capacity for moral ambiguity on the protagonist, leaving the Wicked Witch of the West the single weakest villainous backstory I have ever seen. After all, the development of the antagonist should be as exciting—just look at Darth Vader and Magneto. In this movie, though, all it seems to take is a broken heart and a green apple to create a monster. It is contrived, sexist and altogether inexcusable.
“Oz: The Great and Powerful” may have some strengths, but its weak points weigh too heavily on this film to make it anything but a failure.