Oz but not as we know it. (Return To Oz (DVD))

Member Name: linzeelou

Product:	Return To Oz (DVD)
Date:	27/08/09 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Darker and creepier than the first film (but that's not a hard thing to achieve)

Disadvantages: A bit scary for kids at times

Return to Oz is the sequel to The Wizard of Oz and was released in 1985. It is rated PG as there is only some minor scenes of fantasy violence and is 105 minutes long.

Plot
Return to Oz starts not long after the first film ended. Dorothy is home again but finds herself unable to sleep a lot of the time and her Aunt and Uncle don't believe that she went to Oz. They decide to send her to a mental institution to try get rid of Dorothy's bad dreams. Just before the doctors are going to use electro shock therapy on Dorothy, the machine fails and she manages to run away and returns to Oz.

Things in Oz aren't how they were when Dorothy was last there and she is shocked by what she see's. The yellow brick road is in ruins, they city is being run by the wheelers and the citizens have all been turned into stone. Dorothy must save Oz and along the way she meets some new friends and has another wild adventure.

Cast
Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale
Nicol Williamson as Dr. Worley & The Nome King
Jean Marsh as Head Nurse Wilson & Mombi
Piper Laurie as Aunt Em
Matt Clark as Uncle Henry
Michael Sundin & Tim Rose as Tik-Tok (puppeteers)
Sean Barrett as Tik-Tok (voice)
Mak Wilson as Billina (puppeteer)
Denise Bryer as Billina (voice)
Brian Henson as Jack Pumpkinhead (voice)
Stewart Larange as Jack Pumpkinhead (puppeteer)
Lyle Conway as The Gump (voice)
Steve Norrington as The Gump (puppeteer)
Pons Maar as Lead Wheeler/Nome Messenger
Emma Ridley as Ozma

No Special Features

My Opinion
I don't know of anyone else who likes this film more than the original but I think it is better in so many ways. One of the main differences between this film and the original film is that it isn't a musical and because of that, it doesn't have the same happy feel to it.

Seeing as 40ish years had passed since the original film and Judy Garland could no longer play Dorothy, Fairuza Balk was a strange choice for the role. Balk hadn't been in much before this film but it was the one that helped her progress as an actress. My only real problem with this choice of casting is that Balk looks a lot younger than Judy Garland so it wasn't a realistic choice. I thought Balk brought something really special to this film but it does make me wonder what the original film would have been like without a 'happy' main character.

Toto doesn't join Dorothy in Oz this time and instead she is joined by a Hen, Billina, from her Aunt and Uncle's farm. A lot of people have criticised that Billina was a talking Hen but I loved it. Considering where the story is set and we have seen a talking Lion before, I didn't think it was out of place at all.

Return to Oz really scared me when I was younger and even though it is a PG, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone too young. Some of the bad guys, especially the Wheelers are downright creepy and I wouldn't want to cross them. The other thing that really freaked me out was Mombi, the new Queen of Oz. Any woman who can change her heads just isn't right to me. I really liked the new characters in this film, especially the Wheelers now that I'm older and they don't scare me as much.

In the first film, you get to see who Dorothy created her characters from at the end of the film when she goes home but in Return to Oz, we see this at the beginning. Mombi is one of the nurses at the hospital and Tic Tic was one of the electro shock machines there. I kind of wish that I had an imagination like Dorothy's as a child because she seems to have great fun, even though it seems messed up at times.

The cover to this film is very misleading, as it portrays Return to Oz as a cheery sequel but this certainly isn't the case. The film is quite dark and mysterious throughout and does have a kind of depressing feel to it sometimes. Return to Oz to me can be compared to The Neverending Story and Labyrinth so if you are a fan of those then you should definitely give this a try.

Summary: I never get bored of watching this film