Oz the Great and Powerful

I was born in 1956, so I grew up with the classic MGM Wizard of Oz movie. So ingrained in our culture, any other interpretation doesn't seem quite right. When any others have tried to tell the story of Dorothy Gale and her adventures, they are held to scorn and the gold standard of that classic. The story of how Oz got to Oz has now been interpreted in the film Oz the Great and Powerful. It has been met with a fair amount of comparison and criticism, though it tells the story of what may have happened before Dorothy arrived in Oz. It gives us the back story of the wizard, the witches and the inhabitants of the Emerald City. I like that the wizard is a sleazy flim-flam man out for riches and women. That holds true to the original story.The movie gets a bit lost near the end, but the effects are good and the performances are fine. Good family entertainment, though some of the battle scenes could be too intense for little ones. The flying monkeys are now flying baboons and are pretty scary. The audience I saw it with applauded as the credits rolled.