Oz the Great and Powerful is entirely serviceable family entertainment. Problem is, serviceable doesn't quite cut it when you're talking about the magical land of Oz.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

Let us take a moment to praise two great and surprisingly powerful characters: a winged monkey and a wee girl made out of china. Because so much human wonder resides in these two creations of make-up, puppetry, digital effects and lovely performances.
Critic Score: 3/4

Oz the Great and Powerful somehow manages to be both slavish to its hallowed template (when convenient) and completely tone-deaf to the magic that made it a one-of-a-kind cultural milestone.
Critic Score: D

"Oz the Great and Powerful" will likely dazzle family audiences while satisfying movie purists. Somewhere over the rainbow there may be a more magical movie, but this will certainly do.
Critic Score: B

It's a journey of self-discovery, rife with movie cliches about believing in yourself, believing in your dreams, yada-yada.
Critic Score: 2/4

Oz the Great and Powerful aims for nostalgia in older viewers who grew up on The Wizard of Oz and still hold the classic dear while simultaneously enchanting a newer, younger audience. It never really accomplishes either successfully.

A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late.
Critic Score: 2.5/5

[Oz] qualifies as a cautionary tale, not about the perils of ambition and selfishness, but about the movie industry's misguided belief that it can distract the audience from a film's narrative weaknesses with little more than flash and spectacle.
Critic Score: 1/4

Relax, my pretties. "Oz the Great and Powerful" is a lollapalooza of funhouse thrills and visually sumptuous filmmaking.

What does it say about "Oz the Great and Powerful" that China Doll, a creature born of digital code, is the movie's most affecting character?

It's not like there's zero fun factor here, by a long shot - but the fun comes yoked to a long-winded and predictable story with lots of dead spots.

Franco is, frankly, too callow, too feckless, too much the dude for this role.
Critic Score: 2/4

If it only had a brain. Or a heart. Or nerve.
Critic Score: 0/5

An oppressive, bloated bore, the latest argument that CGI kills the imaginations of talented filmmakers.
Critic Score: 1/4

I suspect there's just enough heart in this sleek Tin Man of a project to connect with an audience.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

The 3-D effects are plentiful - hats, lions, and baboons jump off the screen and into your lap - but the characters rarely lodge in the moviegoer's heart.

The new spinoff from L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz may not be great, exactly, but it is powerfully entertaining.
Critic Score: 3/4

While [Raimi's] Oz is like retinal crack, he never seduces our hearts and minds.
Critic Score: C+

Director Sam Raimi's dull, kitschy and overlong patchwork is sadly an epic fail - despite the presence of Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis as a trio of witches.
Critic Score: 1/4

Oz the Great and Powerful can be enjoyed, up to a point, on its own colorful, diverting but finally rather futile terms.