Title: Tin Man (12)
Year: 2007
Running Time: 257 minutes
Director: Nick Willing
Cast: Zooey Deschanel (DG), Alan Cumming (Glitch), Neal McDonough (Wyatt Cain) Notes: Won numerous awards including one Emmy, nominated for nine Emmys.
Rating: 9
Thoughts: In a loose reimagining of the Wizard of Oz, DG is swept back to the O-Zee, where she and her companions must defeat the witch from destroying everything.
So much of this is delicious. The DG character transpires to be a descendant of Dorothy and was sent to safety in the real world. She then gets drawn back to Oz, now called the O-Zee, or Outer Zone, and joins a familiar, but utterly reimagined, band.
Deschanel is excellent and ably supported by the versatile Cumming and solid McDonough, as well as a sprawling supporting cast.
Some of the feature ideas (the tin man being left in a metal suit for years with life support so that he can watch a hologram of his wife and child's abduction, over and over again, for example) are very clever, and it all looks great.
A few dips are of course there, as you would expect over four plus hours. I don't think the munchkin creatures get enough involvement. The enemy troops are just a little thick. And the wicked witch is directed to be a little panto in style.
They aren't the biggest things as the narrative is very strong and the story bounds past. But they perhaps detract from the end result a little, in particular the baddie troops. A little more application and they could have sorted all of this in the first ten minutes.
Of course they can't be allowed to, so just present it more sensibly!
Rather than being a remake this is a total reimagining and is very rich in ideas. The strong acting then outweighs any faults to make it a great mini-series.