Here’s a thing. There are really bad movies, the utter duds & debacles, & you know it right off & straight through. These films can stimulate sharp popular criticism, or comedy (as in MST3K). They’ll provide a rubbernecking kind of recreation for you and your more lunkheaded buddies. Or, maybe most often, they tempt us to malice, and the kind of deplorable scoffing that informed the likes of the Medveds’ Golden Turkey Awards, and way too much popular culture discourse. In the end, what profit is there to savaging things, which after all, however inadequate the outcome, usually cost the blood and sweat of a lot hard working people? If you can’t say anything nice, or constructively negative …
There are crappy movies then, and the often crappy ways we respond to them. But some movies are failures, or follies, and those can be another thing entirely. The Wiz is a failure. It strikes you as being misaligned, out of synch, wrong-headed. Diana Ross is a prodigious talent, and we find her here at her prime. But the approach to her Dorothy character is ill-judged, and its bravely held to for the duration of this very long movie.
| Here’s a thing. There are really bad movies, the utter duds & debacles, & you know it right off & straight through. These films can stimulate sharp popular criticism, or comedy (as in <em>MST3K</em>). They’ll provide a rubbernecking kind of recreation for you and your more lunkheaded buddies. Or, maybe most often, they tempt us to malice, and the kind of deplorable scoffing that informed the likes of the Medveds’ <em>Golden Turkey Awards</em>, and way too much popular cultural discourse. In the end, what profit is there to savaging things, which after all, however inadequate the outcome, usually cost the blood and sweat of a lot hard working people? If you can’t say anything nice, or constructively negative … | ||
| There are crappy movies then, and the often crappy ways we respond to them. But some movies are <em>fail</em>ures, or follies, and those can be another thing entirely. So can the ways we think about them, which can actually be quite instructive, and quite productive. | ||
| <em>The Wiz </em>is a failure. It strikes you as being misaligned, out of synch, wrong-headed. Diana Ross is a prodigious talent, and we find her here at her prime. But the approach to her Dorothy character is ill-judged, and its stubbornly held to for the duration of this very long movie. Too emphatic, too yearning, too embarrassingly needy! | ||
| It’s not like the MGM original is so mythologically comp Michael Jackson! But as the Scarecrow they keep him hobbled for most of the movie |