Movie reviews: Oz, Beautiful Creatures and more

Last weekend, we gave the Redbox Instant program a try and rented three DVDs for free with our credits. Unfortunately I thought that two of the three movies were absolute duds, but my husband seemed to like all three of them. None of these are particularly kid-friendly, but tweens and teens will have fun with some of them.

Oz the Great and Powerful: One of the greatest things about The Wizard of Oz was the female empowerment in the film. You’ve got good and bad witches and a female heroine who saves everyone—and a wizard who really isn’t very helpful at all. Oz the Great and Powerful unfortunately kills that entire thing and creates a bad witch out of a woman pining for a man she just met, some stupid, incompetent witches who can’t do anything for themselves and an entire movie that needn’t have happened at all according to one single scene! I wish I could un-see this movie. My daughter enjoyed it, at least, but I really hated the ideas behind it. This is the only movie that she was able to see from the three; the other two are definitely not appropriate for young children.

Beautiful Creatures: If you’ve read the book and expect to see it on the screen, you’ll be disappointed. It has some fun, sharp dialogue and it’s so much better for teen girls than, say, the sparkle-vamp series. But a lot of the cool scenes from the book are cut and there’s still controlling boyfriend issues. Of course, in this case, he’s in danger from her, so the power level is a bit more matched. This was the best of the three we watched.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters: This might as well be called Shoot Em Up at the Gingerbread House. It was that stupid, not even mildly entertaining, and filled with pointless violence, bad dialogue, virtually no acting and lots of violence against women. I didn’t like this one at all (and not just because I can’t stand to see Famke Jansen ever since her portrayal of Jean Grey ruined X-Men for me for years), and if you have kids watching it, know that it has graphic violence and lots of gore. It’s not as scary as it could be—most of that is just really messy looking, if anything—but it’s not appropriate for all audiences, for sure.

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