scallenger

For it's brevity, you get a lot of the story and characters. It blends post-9/11 trauma of the main lead with the light comic antics of the publisher character, Liz, in a way that in less able hands would not have worked at all, and perhaps even offended. But here it works. Add the great performances with the wonderful camera work and imagery it presents, with a nice music score, especially the song on the end credits. I even admired the text style used in the opening and ending credits adding just that extra flavor to this nice film short. It's a wonderful story of overcoming your obstacles, whatever they may be, for the sake of what matters for yourself and those you love, all through the form of art.

Return to Oz is a film that deserves more attention than it gets, and this film finally gave it some of that well deserved attention. It centers around a nice variety of fans who give their own views on the film, both what makes it work and what doesn't. It's a very honest approach that sheds all the reality of how the film came to be and how and why it met it's demise with the box office. It is inter-cut with some nice footage of scenes from the film, and other films, and even some behind the scenes material from a rare documentary. The only thing that could have possibly made it a further joy to watch would have been to get someone involved in the film to have participated, as hard as that would have most certainly been. As it is, it is a great documentary on the film from a fan perspective, much akin to something like "Indyfans" or "Trekkies". I'm glad Return To Oz has something like this!

One Star. That's all this documentary deserves. I haven't felt this disappointed in watching a movie, let alone a documentary, in quite some time.

I'm a BIG fan of the "Walking With..." series, including it's Nigel Marvin spin-offs, for all their gleeful fun yet informative information. And although the subject of prehistoric man has never interested me nearly as much as other prehistoric creatures, the subject is still interesting and unique to explore. Having seen all the other docs from the series, I figured I need to see this one as well, especially after seeing relatively good reviews in other places.

Well for those of you who put up a good review of this doc... what were you thinking?! lol.

Though the information that they were able to get through was interesting, the presentation failed in every other way possible. It had a terrible flow, was incredibly unfocused in what it was trying to say (with information scrambled and sometimes out of of place), horrible effects (that includes the few moments of CGI and especially the makeup effects), and overused MTV-style camera effects.

Speaking of the makeup effects, one reviewer here mentioned how laughable the scene was when the cavemen come across this giant ape and how it looks a lot like a 70s man-in-suit horror movie. Well there are plenty of moments just like that were the people portraying the ape men looked ridiculous and acted ridiculous. None of this is helped by horrible camera positions and compositions.

The worst part of all is none of it is shown in an interesting or dynamic way, or looks remotely real. It doesn't even look like it was taken seriously. It also lacked any emotional punch that the predecessors of the series had. Remember the episode in "Walking With Dinosaurs" of the fate of the Ornithochirus (sp?)? That episode still gets me on the verge of tears every time I watch it. It's this sort of engagement with the subject that lacks here most of all. When you are more engaged in the subject and it's own personal story, even one that is just speculation, you care more about the facts surrounding it.

The only saving graces of this production are the fairly good narration (at least in the BBC version I saw) and the music. Otherwise, DO NOT bother even renting this one unless you want to have a good laugh (which I did frequently, but usually followed by rolling eyes). This does not belong on the shelf with the other "Walking With..." docs.

And does it make sense to learn that this doc was NOT produced or directly involved with the same people who did the others in the series? Hmmm...