Return to Oz

1985 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Dorothy, after being institutionalized and scheduled for shock therapy, finds herself in Oz once again, this time with a chicken instead of a dog. She has to collect some friends to save Oz from some mean rock man.

It's unclear to me how anybody at Disney could watch this and think it was appropriate for anybody. Kids' entertainment from the 80s was a little darker, I suppose, with your Labyrinths and Dark Crystals and heart-removal scenes in Indiana Jones movies. Disney had some dark material, too, with The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective. So disregard what I wrote up there. This is for children, and it's one of those things that explains why the turn of the century ended up the way it did.

I mean, we start with Dorothy (a confusedly younger Dorothy than the one from 1939) being sent off for shock therapy.

Anyway, here are some observations/questions:

1) This Toto--a different Toto from the original film, I assume--really hams it up early, and I'm guessing that was why he was replaced by a chicken.

2) "All the animals in Oz could talk." Nyuh-uh, Dorothy! Your memory's failing you after 46 years apparently. Those flying monkeys didn't talk. Toto didn't talk.

3) Speaking of the flying monkeys, they're nowhere to be seen, replaced by the equally horrifying "Wheelers." Fluorescent new-wave punks, these dudes roller-skating around on all fours are so 1980s. I wish I would have tried to skate around the local rink on all fours when I was a kid because it would have been fucking hot. This was right around my roller-skating heyday, too.

4) Dorothy asks, "Where are all the Munchkins?" and that was my thought exactly! We finally get a bit of Munchkin action at the very end of the movie, but the rest of the movie was disappointingly Munchkinless.

5) Scarecrow is played by an actor named Justin Case.  I bet somebody said something like "Hey, Justin Case, just in case your acting career doesn't work out, you should get yourself a business degree."

6) I really like the special effects used to animate the rocks or, later on, the mean rock man. It reminds me a little bit of the computer-animated face stuff in Tron. Once rocks start watching Dorothy and her chicken, it looks like the rocks are animated using claymation, but I can't confirm that because I am lazy and don't want to.

7) The talking chicken irritated me. Along with the early appearance of a "lunch pail tree," it seemed like the Disney people were trying a little too hard to make this whimsical.

8) "Will you please check my head for signs of spoiling?"

9) Tik-Tok operates a little like a BattleBot. It's unclear to me why a robot needs to blink. Michael Sundin must be the little person inside Tik-Tok while none other than Tim "Admiral Ackbar" Rose voices him. Actually, I just looked it up. There's another guy (Sean Barrett) who is credited as the voice of Tik-Tok. Why did it take three people to play one robot?

10) I thought I recognized the voice of Gump, the moose-headed creature they build and ride on, but IMDb tells me Lyle Conway only had one other credit.

11) Another new friend--the pumpkinheaded guy. "What is this? A man or a melon?" Jack Pumpkinhead was his name. Of course, because what else could it be? Jack's got mommy issues, but I loved his shirt.

12) The princess with interchangeable heads who wants to harvest Dorothy's head? Yikes, she's menacing. Mombi isn't quite the icon that the Wicked Witch in the original is, but then again, the Wicked Witch only had one head.

13) Rock Man (Ok, Nome King) has a moment where he reveals a shocking fashion choice, and I have to admit, it made me laugh out loud. And I don't laugh!

14) I loved a trippy psychedelic fall into a mountain, and that Deadly Desert? Yikes.

15) The egg miracle seemed a little random, but I guess all miracles are like that.

All things considered, I really enjoyed this. I don't remember if I saw it as a kid or not. I thought I had memories of watching it when I lived in Terre Haute, but the movie didn't even exist at that time. It must have been another movie with a pumpkin-headed guy.