Now even overlooking the extraordinary coincidence that his men turn up to get them on the very day she is about to be given them, it begs the question why he left the papers there in the first place when they could easily have been destroyed. His gags are mostly physical and some of the stunt-work is impressive but there are also sequences which go on well past the point where the idea has been milked, notably an impossible scene where Semon is hiding in wooden crates and somehow manages to teleport himself from one to another! Given the otherwise complete absence of magic in the film, the sequence defies explanation.Īlso confused is the idea that the ruling Prime Minister of Oz is going to whatever lengths necessary to retrieve papers that prove that Dorothy is the true ruler of Oz. The plot is more centred around Semon's character who loves Dorothy but spends most of the time clowning around totally independently of her. He's not a wizard but a charlatan and has little relevance to the story other than to provide a (very tenuous) reason why the farmhands disguise themselves as a scarecrow, tin man and lion.ĭorothy totally lacks any motive throughout this film. Most disgracefully the film's eponymous character, the Wizard, is hardly in the plot at all. At the end of the film he's one of the prime villains! Likewise Dorothy's Uncle Henry is initially hostile towards her, then is a protective guardian before becoming a bit of a villain again by the end. When we first see him he's kind and protective towards Dorothy. Then there's Oliver Hardy's character which is inconsistent throughout the film. Some of the elements of Baum's original story are shoe-horned into the plot without much logic behind them, and there are a number of sub-plots that are not satisfactorily resolved.ĭorothy loves her Auntie Em - but once the action switches to Oz, Auntie Em and Kansas are just forgotten about. Larry Semon's complete re-working of the story just fails. And by very loosely I mean its taken a few basic ideas - a girl called Dorothy, three workers from her farm in Kansas who (sort of) become a scarecrow, a tin woodman and a lion, and a far off land called Oz where resides a 'wizard'. **Contains spoilers ** Where do I begin with this one? Okay, you'll have gathered that the film is based only very loosely on the book. Reviewed by DPMay 3 / 10 A curio from the silent era but not a good film Semon becomes a scarecrow, Hardy briefly disguises himself as a Tin Woodman, and Snowball is given a Lion suit by the Wizard, which he uses to scare the Pumperdink guards.-Scott Hutchins They land in Oz, where the farmhands try to avoid capture. Snowball, a black farmhand soon joins them after a lightning bolt chases him into the sky. She, Uncle Henry, and two farmhands are swept to Oz by a tornado. Dorothy learns from Aunt Em that fat, cruel Uncle Henry is not her uncle, and gives her a note due on her eighteenth birthday, which reveals she is actually Princess Dorothea of Oz, and is supposed to marry Prince Kynd. A Toymaker tells a bizarre story about how the Land of Oz was ruled by Prince Kynd, but he was overthrown by Prime Minister Kruel.
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