Review of Return to Oz (1985) by Rob H — 30 Mar 2008

I hate the 1939 Judy Garland [i]Wizard of Oz[/i].

There. I've said it. And I don't care how angry it makes you. You can all bloody well suck it up. I know--ruby slippers, no place like home, you were there. Well, here's the thing, kids. One of those three appears in the book. The slippers were silver, and it assuredly wasn't all a dream. And while there may be no place like home, half a dozen books in, Oz [i]becomes[/i] home for Dorothy. And Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Further, it's a Dorothy encountering some real danger. And she's a sassy little maybe-twelve-year-old blonde, to boot. Maybe--probably; it's been a while since I read the books--even younger. She's certainly not Judy Garland.

And [i]Return to Oz[/i] . . . okay, there's definitely the nostalgia factor, here. I saw this movie in the theatre in 1985. However, by the time I saw it, I'd read the first three Oz books, plus quite a few others. (I still haven't read all fifteen, however.) And, no, this isn't really any of them. It's about a third [i]The Land of Oz[/i], a third [i]Ozma of Oz[/i], and a third [i]Random Crap the Scriptwriters Made Up[/i]. We don't get the Wogglebug or Tip or Jinjur. We don't get the royal family of Ev or the Hungry Tiger or the Magic Carpet. Mombi and Princess Langwidere have been conflated. And, yes, Dorothy still has brown hair and ruby slippers, I grant you, but it's apparently because they knew that, if they did it right, those who are ignorant of the books but obsessed with the first movie (yeah, I know; it isn't, but nobody remembers that) would get all snippy at them.

Mombi is the witch from the second book. She had in her care a young boy named Tip. She did, indeed, bring home the Powder of Life, which she did, indeed, sprinkle on a pumpkin-headed figure that Tip had made to frighten her. Tip and Jack Pumpkinhead bring a wooden sawhorse to life and escape, meeting up with a woman named Jinjur and her all-girl army, which takes over Oz. It turns out that Tip is really the enchanted Princess Ozma. We keep terribly little of this story for [i]Return to Oz[/i].

More of it comes from [i]Ozma of Oz[/i]. Dorothy is on a trip with Uncle Henry; he's sailing to Australia for his health. She gets washed overboard in a storm and ends up riding a chicken coop to safety with a hen called Bill; Dorothy changes her name to Billina. They wash up on the shores of Ev, which is across the desert from Oz. They find Tik-Tok, battle Wheelers, get captured by Princess Langwidere--she of the thirty-one heads and one dress--and end up with the contingent from Oz on their journey to the Court of the Nome King, where they are trying to rescue the Royal Family of Ev, who have all been turned (minus that princess, of course) into ornaments. Things then progress much as they do in [i]Return to Oz[/i], though each person gets one guess more than there are enchanted ornaments in the rooms. In the end, it is Billina who rescues essentially everyone.

What did they keep in [i]The Wizard of Oz[/i]? I grant you that there's a lot. Dorothy Gale, she of the appropriate name, ends up flying by cyclone to Oz. Her family home crashes on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. She is hailed as a hero by four Munchkins and the Good Witch of the North, and they tell her to take the [i]silver[/i] slippers. Glinda kisses her on the forehead, granting her protection from essentially everything magical. She travels along the Yellow Brick Road, meeting the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion. This journey takes days, and she is hailed by the Munchkins as she goes. She and her compatriots reach the Emerald City, where they are fitted with emerald goggles that make everything green. (Things in Munchkinland are blue.).

The Wizard appears to all four in separate guises, one at a time, and sends them to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. She takes Dorothy prisoner even though Glinda's kiss protects her, and she keeps attempting to steal the slippers. During one of her attempts, she makes Dorothy accidentally spill water on her; she dissolves and Dorothy triumphs. She and her friends return to the Emerald City, where they find out the the Wizard is a humbug from Nebraska, though [i]he does actually give them a heart, a brain, and courage[/i]. None of this "you've had it all the time" crap. He does, indeed, attempt to fly himself and Dorothy to the US in a hot air balloon, and he does, indeed, end up flying there alone. Then, Dorothy and company take a lengthy, dangerous journey to encounter Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. (Your guess as to why two Glindas is as good as mine.) Then, Glinda teached Dorothy about the slippers, which she uses to go home--where everyone is very worried because of how long she's been gone.

Yeah, I know. It's turning out to be more an overview of the Oz books than a review of the Oz movies. And, yeah, it turns out that the first one really has a lot more in common with its book, though what it leaves out or changes is pretty important. I guess it's really the ending that bothers me. And [i]Return to Oz[/i] deals with that quite nicely. You see, Dorothy would be greatly changed by her experiences. And that would start bothering people. In the first half-dozen books, what mostly worries her aunt and uncle--and worries her on their behalf--is that she has this tendency to disappear for long stretches. [i]The Wizard of Oz[/i] treats it as if that time doesn't really pass. [i]Return to Oz[/i] at least implies that it does, for all that Dorothy's only really there for two days at most.

There's also the syrupy nature of the first one. Or, as someone once said about something completely different, apparently, the producers/directors/screenwriters of [i]The Wizard of Oz[/i] didn't realize they could have drilled a hole in the picture to let the sap out.