Happy Thanksgiving!  We’re finally doing it; Over a year after my friend requested it, we’re finally digging into The Wiz.  Directed by Sidney Lumet with a screenplay by Joel Schumacher (yes, that Joel Schumacher), this reimagining of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has been reimagined, again, to take place in a post-apocalyptic New York City where we’re meant to believe that sentient trash cans will attack you, monkeys can ride Harleys and Diana Ross is 24-years-old.

I originally was going to post this on Halloween because of the costumes, but postponed it until today because this movie has wedged itself firmly in the Thanksgiving holiday canon.  And why not?  The beginning of The Wiz does a terrific job making us feel that cozy togetherness of a family gathering – arriving in a warm townhouse when it’s uncomfortably cold outside, placing your coat in a pile on the bed, playing pass the newborn baby, watching the game on TV, and tightly cramming yourself around a table in a dining room that isn’t designed to hold that many people.  It instantly brought me back to family Christmases of the past and filled me with that wistful nostalgia for that place and people you can never return to.  Although I almost had a coronary when I watched someone cut onions on the countertop without a cutting board LADY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

Let’s start with the massive elephant in the room.  Why oh why was Dorothy aged up to 24 to only be played by a 33-year-old woman?  It’s… Well, it’s bizarre.  Dorothy is elementary school-aged in the novel, and teenaged in the stage production of The Wiz, which informs a lot of the decisions she makes.  Watching a “twenty-something” kindergarten teacher constantly complain about how scared she is reads more cowardly than the lion.  And not to mention wanting to go home to an Aunt Em who minutes before was trying to kick her out of the house… what is she returning to?  She’s a grown-ass woman; she can live on her own.  But I’m getting ahead of myself… Stephanie Mills, who was the original stage Dorothy, wasn’t given the role because Diana went over Berry Gordy’s head (Motown Records owned the rights to the movie) and convinced the producer Robert Cohen to cast her.  Universal agreed to the proposal because she’s a big star, so, y’know, butts in seats and all that.  The director that had signed on, John Badham, quit the project after her casting.

Diana Ross is a powerhouse; an absolutely unshakeable talent.  I feel the need to state this lest y’all think this is a condemnation of her abilities as a performer, because even though her singing makes me cry, I’m not going to shy away from the fact she was an incredibly odd choice for Dorothy.  She looks like she should have learned these lessons already.

Even surrounded by family, Dorothy is not feeling the love.  She places herself on the outside of this gathering for some reason, and then is chastised by her Aunt for her arrested development.  Em suggests Dorothy, a kindergarten teacher, would be a great candidate for a position at the high school, but Dorothy is afraid to pursue it, perhaps because it requires a completely different skill set.  She only has a minute to process getting kicked out of the house before her dog Toto flees out an open apartment AND building door into an unprecedented snowstorm, and honestly if my dog did that I’d just let it die cause clearly we have different priorities.  Dorothy is kinder than me, however, runs after the pup and gets swept up in a snow cyclone and transported to OZ.

Look, I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life and not once have I encountered or even heard about a snow cyclone.  A snowclone, if you will.  This is one of the goofy things that had to be inserted into the script when the story was wholesale transplanted to New York City from Kansas.  This is a fantasy story, however, so I’ll let it slide, but I’m not going to overlook how clunky it feels.

Dorothy is launched like a missile into a kiddie pool filled with sawdust and surrounded by the creepiest sentient paper dolls I’ve ever seen.  The OZ sign she crashed through, cause, y’know, she couldn’t be in a flying brownstone, fell on the wicked witch of the east, Evermean, and killed her good and dead.  The good witch of the north, Miss One, congratulates Dorothy on her murder and gives Dorothy the wicked witch’s silver shoes (because the shoes in the book are silver, not red, which I’m sure you already know because that’s Oz 101, but I’d be remiss not to add it here).  Dorothy is like, oh no, I have to get home to the life I don’t like and Miss One is like, ok, cool, The Wiz can help with that and points her in the direction of the yellow brick road that will lead her and Toto to The Emerald City.

Dorothy begrudgingly accepts this quest, but not before she sings another sad song talking about how she’s sad and blah blah blahhhh.

Diana Ross suffers from what I call “Hopelessly Devoted Syndrome” in this movie.  For some reason they added like 3 songs for her to sing, but they’re all the kind of songs where, if you were watching at home, you’d take the moment to get up and use the bathroom or grab a snack.  “Soon As I Get Home” originates with the stage show, but compiled with “Can I Go On?” and “Is This What Feeling Gets?” makes Dorothy look like a Debbie Downer Sad Sack.  Legit, Dorothy sings 6 solos in this movie and they’re all slow and grind the plot to a halt.  Not that Diana Ross doesn’t sell it – her vocal performance really is the only saving grace for her character – but all this to say The Wiz has a massive pacing problem.

After wandering around a severely blighted NYC, Dorothy runs into a… scarecrow?  These crows give me Dumbo vibes and immediately I’m on edge.  But oh my god, Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow is easily my favorite performance of this film.

The tiled pillars breaking free from their concrete prison to surround the travelers is inspired, but I cannot stop laughing at these actors pretending the trash cans with teeth hot glued to them are eating their arms. 

Thankfully with all their limbs intact and hot off his first victory against sentient garbage, the Lion leads Dorothy through a sea of strippers/drug dealers only to get knocked out by their potent “perfume”.

~tickle~

The poppies in the book are a danger to The Lion, Dorothy and Toto because they are living beings that are susceptible to the effects of opium, not because The Lion was dumb and led them into a trap.  When the Scarecrow and Tin Man come to their rescue in The Wiz, the Lion is ashamed his hubris lead Dorothy and Toto into danger, but Dorothy comforts him with yet another slow song to motivate him to nut the fuck up and keep on going while he licks her like he’s been cast in 2019’s Cats.

This song made more sense in context if The Lion didn’t already show he could be brave by fighting off enchanted demon puppets, ‘cause he’s capable of being a Lion in a very Lion-like way.  Regardless, “Be a Lion” is a very sweet song, and it shows how Dorothy is kind and nurturing to her friends, reminding the Lion that even though he may make mistakes, he can persevere.  It’s just weird they chose to place it after the ‘we got drugged by prostitutes’ scene.  Also, not to be ‘that guy’, but this is supposed to be a kids movie, right?

ANYWAY, Dorothy and her friends finally make it to Oz and holy shit, this is so vogue coded, I love it so much.

The Wiz, instead of forcing his citizens to wear green-tinted glasses, changes the color story of his city based on his own whims, clearly illustrating his curation of colors directly influencing the trends.  The Emerald City sequence, filmed in the shadow of the World Trade Center, is fucking massive, and unless you can find me another example otherwise, may be the most dancers used at once in an American-made movie.  The set designer had to accommodate 22 different playback speakers in order to avoid the dancers in the back from experiencing an audio delay.

This one musical number required 1200 different costumes, three for each of their 400 dancers, one in each color The Wiz transitioned to, and everyone looks so chic!  I can’t get over how the costume department could possibly operate at that level considering the scale.  The makeup and costuming in The Wiz in general has been a standout in the world of musical movies – I especially appreciate the Tin Man being compiled of old coffee cans and the Lion having beautiful hair styled to look like a mane – but man, it really makes you wish they took a second pass at the Lion’s dusty bath mat coat.

After the party has concluded, the Wiz requests to see witch-killer Dorothy sans her eclectic sidekicks.  This is a change from the original story that allows Dorothy the opportunity to show some agency by sticking up for her friends while painting The Wiz as someone who is accustomed to convince powerful people to do his bidding for him and discarding those who he considers useless.  The fearsome foursome make their requests to the all-powerful fire-breathing glitterball, and we’re deprived of this jaunty song because the Wiz indignantly hides in his big-ass head the whole time.  When Dorothy refuses to give him her shoes in exchange for their wishes, The Wiz sends her on a murder quest to whack the Wicked Witch of the West, which Dorothy is as pleased with as you’d think she’d be.  But realizing she has no choice she rallies the troops and they travel west to knock off some owner of a sweatshop.

Mabel King originated Evillene on Broadway and her vibes are perfect.  The gravelly way she addresses everyone around her, the confident way she looms over everyone despite being shorter, the ruthless way she harms Dorothy’s friends to get what she wants – she’s so delicious to hate.  The obvious and obnoxious display of wealth on her dress is the cherry on top of the exploitation sundae.  When the gang is ultimately captured, Evillene begins to torture everyone close to Dorothy to incentivize her to give up her silver shoes, but she holds strong until Evillene threatens to literally burn Toto alive.

I dunno why Evillene installed water-based safety measures when she clearly doesn’t care about saving her workers if something lit itself on fire, nevertheless one that will kill her instantly, but the Scarecrow immediately notices it and pantomimes to Dorothy to pull the fire alarm and diffuse the situation before she relinquishes her slippers.  Evillene doesn’t really melt as much as she’s slowly flushed down a rhinestoned toilet, but her death inspires her former workers to peel off their skin and celebrate.

Congrats on your second murder, Dorothy!  Now it’s a pattern!

Sincerely, props to these dancers, because “Brand New Day” looks like the most exhausting choreography I’ve ever seen.  I’d be lobbying to be one of the lucky ones who gets to stand inert in the rafters.

After liberating the workers, the flying… Hells Angels return Dorothy and company to Emerald City, only for them to immediately realize they were duped by The Wiz into committing a pretty heinous crime.  See, The Wiz isn’t all powerful, he’s an aspiring politician from Atlantic City that happened to float into Oz on a rogue hot air balloon.  His sniveling, pathetic butt comes clean to Dorothy as he pleads with Dorothy not to abandon him.  While Dorothy is furious, her friends’ disappointment at not obtaining their wishes diverts her attention.  She convinces them they don’t need brains, a heart, or courage from The Wiz because each of them had the power within them all along.  Awwww.

With Dorothy’s friends now self-actualized, an ethereal Lena Horne, the good witch of the south, magically appears.  “Me and these awkward floating babies need to remind you to treat yourself like you’d treat your friends.  If we know ourselves we’re always home, anywhere.” 

I went on a not-so-brief side quest this summer to read all about Kay Thompson, prolific nightclub singer and brief vocal coach for MGM back in the 40s.  We’ll learn all about her when I finally finish my post on Funny Face, but listening to Lena absolutely knock “If You Believe” out of the park reminded me of this passage from Sam Irvin’s biography on Kay:

“Home” being an abstract concept is a nice theory and all, except Dorothy does go back to New York, doesn’t she?  But not before telling Richard Pryor, who is deprived of yet another song, he can suck it.  Stripped of his title of The Wiz, Dorothy reminds Herman Smith he won’t find out his true self holed up in an attic somewhere – he needs to adventure out like she did.  And with that, Dorothy says goodbye to the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion and clicks her heels 3 times to return to her aunt’s house.

Look, I’ve had a really shitty year, and the last 15 minutes of this movie made me a weepy mess.

I approached The Wiz not really knowing what to expect, and I was both surprised and frustrated with myself that I couldn’t initially watch it without a critical eye, comparing it to the book and the stage show.  Sidney Lumet was attempting to make the largest musical movie ever, and when you have dozens upon dozens of dancers on the set, unless you’re the kind of hyper focused government who will rehearse this kind of thing to perfection for an Olympic ceremony in 2008, you’re going to have a hard time maintaining the polish and crispness of the choreography.  In framing the shots to show your fantastically grand set, you’re going to lose some of the connection with the characters.  The pacing of the movie is also going to suffer if you need to add more screen time for your leading lady, which will simultaneously give her friends less to do.  And maybe casting a child would have been a better way to get kids to connect to Dorothy?  But like… do any of my criticisms really matter?

Once I took a deep breath, got out of my head and let myself just experience The Wiz, I found it incredibly charming despite its flaws.  The creativity on display – from the music, the sets, the outfits, the performance of its cast – is truly dazzling.  However, the message of the story is what feels incredibly important to me.  The characters establish camaraderie and support each other’s goals, learning to not let their deficiencies define them while giving themselves the space to make mistakes and learn from them.  It’s incredibly important for children to not fear trying new things, and feeling supported regardless of the outcome is what will allow them to move forward and be brave.  It’s what made me so emotional at the end of the movie; picturing a kid hearing they should believe in the strength they already have inside.  The Wiz should be required watching for any 6-year-old – they’ll be too young to understand wtf is going on with the poppies, it’s fine.

Honestly, it’s pretty criminal this didn’t make the Rotten Tomatoes list.  Hold your chosen family close today and maybe take a detour and watch this silly movie.