The Wiz

This one I found recently. Apparently, in 1975 there was a release of The Wizard of Oz for the stage, only this show had some major changes. Instead of a the classic song's like 'we're off to see the wizard' or 'If I only had a heart', we are instead treated with 'Ease on down the road' and 'Brand new day' and the cast is now all black. This was a major turn in theater and Broadway. The show was a major hit with audiences and critics alike and won many award's in the Tony awards, including Best Musical and a Drama desk award for 'Outstanding Musical'. In 1978, the film right's to the show was bought by Motown, the legendary american RnB record label and was released by Universal. What we got was a very interesting film, to say the least.

What differ's from the show in this film is that instead of taking place in Kansas, it take's place in New York with Dorothy(played by Diana Ross) being swept off to the land of Oz, a sort of scitzo version of New York. So, instead of a scarecrow of straw we are given one made of garbage(Michael Jackson) , a tin man based on an amusement park piece of animatronics(Nipsy Russel) and a lion based on a library statue(Ted Ross). I find this a clever adaption of the Wiz by making it take place in New York, although I would have liked it to be more faithful to the stage show. Other changes include changing the Witch of the north to Miss One(number obsessed), flying monkey's no longer flying or monkey's and multiple song's added or replaced with some new one's. In fact the Wiz himself gets no song's when he did in fact have three song's in the show. The story is more or less the same, so I won't bore with the details. We can thank Joel Schumacher for it's strange, yet interesting story line.

Let's see, I dislike some of the change's and the fact that some of my favorite song's where removed(all the song's were my favorite). I do believe that Diana was a bit of a miscast, but now I cannot un-see her in the role, her singing saved her. Richard Pryor did a good Wiz, although they made Nipsy sing, so they could have given him a song or two. Also the main issue I had was how dark in lighting and story it was, but I think that was the idea to make all hope and good seem lost, only for darkness to be triumphed over at the end.

But what was good is really good. The song's, singing and choreography was stellar, the costumes were very good, the effect's were good for it's time and for the most part the acting is pretty good. It was able to rely on it's reputation of the show and not eat off the classic musical by using nostalgia. Overall a strange, but enjoyable film. It's a guilty pleasure i'll freely admit to. It's got me planning for a remake anyway.