Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Oz the Great and Powerful received an approval rating of 56% based on 270 reviews, with an average rating of 6.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It suffers from some tonal inconsistency and a deflated sense of wonder, but Oz the Great and Powerful still packs enough visual dazzle and clever wit to be entertaining in its own right." On Metacritic the film holds a score of 44 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Kim Newman, writing for Empire, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and wrote
"If there are post-Harry Potter children, who don't know or care about The Wizard of Oz, they might be at sea with this story about a not-very-nice grownup in a magic land, but long-term Oz watchers will be enchanted and enthralled ... Mila Kunis gets a gold star for excellence in bewitchery and Sam Raimi can settle securely behind the curtain as a mature master of illusion."
Critic Alonso Duralde also admired the movie:
"That Oz the Great and Powerful is so thoroughly effective both on its own terms and as a prequel to one of the most beloved movies ever made indicates that this team has magic to match any witch or wizard."
Leonard Maltin on IndieWire claimed that
"No movie ever can, or will, replace 1939's The Wizard Of Oz, but taken on its own terms, this eye-filling fantasy is an entertaining riff on how the Wizard of that immortal film found his way to Oz."
Roth Cornet rated the film 7.8 out of 10 on IGN, and wrote
"The film is expansive and larger-than-life in scope and so are the performances, overall. Franco in particular hams it up and is often playing to the balcony ... The 3−D is utilized just as it should be in a children's fantasy epic such as this – overtly, but with skill. Snowflakes, music boxes and mysterious animals all leap through the screen towards the audience as the story unfolds."
Justin Chang of Variety had a mixed reaction, writing that the film
... "gets some mileage out of its game performances, luscious production design and the unfettered enthusiasm director Sam Raimi brings to a thin, simplistic origin story." He also compared the film's scale with the Star Wars prequel trilogy adding,
"In a real sense, Oz the Great and Powerful has a certain kinship with George Lucas's Star Wars prequels, in the way it presents a beautiful but borderline-sterile digital update of a world that was richer, purer and a lot more fun in lower-tech form. Here, too, the actors often look artificially superimposed against their CG backdrops, though the intensity of the fakery generates its own visual fascination."
/Film rated the film 7 out of 10, saying it had "many charms" while considering it to be
"basically Army of Darkness: (Normal guy lands in magical land, is forced to go on quest to save that land.) But just when you see Raimi's kinetic, signature style starting to unleash, the story forces the film back into its Disney shell to play to the masses. We're left with a film that's entertaining, a little scarier than you'd expect, but extremely inconsistent."
Richard Roeper, writing for Roger Ebert, noted the film's omnipresent visual effects but was largely disappointed by the performance of some cast members:
"... to see Williams so bland and sugary as Glinda, and Kunis so flat and ineffectual as the heartsick Theodora ..."
Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post was unimpressed, writing,
"Oh, it's exciting enough for a six-year-old; anyone older, however, will already have been exposed to so much on TV, at the movies and on the Internet that this will seem like so much visual cotton-candy. Even a sophisticated grade-schooler will find these doings weak and overblown."
Similarly, Todd McCarthy criticized the characterization, writing that the film's supporting cast
"can't begin to compare with their equivalents in the original ... so the burden rests entirely upon Franco and Williams, whose dialogue exchanges are repetitive and feel tentative."
Entertainment Weekly agreed, giving the film a C+ and saying that the "miscast" Franco
"lacks the humor, charm, and gee-whiz wonder we're meant to feel as he trades wisecracks with a flying monkey ... and soars above a field of poppies in a giant soap bubble. If he's not enchanted, how are we supposed to be?"
and complaining that "while Raimi's Oz is like retinal crack, he never seduces our hearts and minds."
Alisha Coelho of in.com gave the movie 2.5 stars, saying "Oz The Great and Powerful doesn't leave a lasting impression, but is an A-OK watch."
