OZZZZZZZZZ...

The opening credits of Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return appear on debris flung at us from a twister. The objects on which we see the names are reflective of the person’s contribution—the name of Hugh Dancy, for instance, who provides the voice of “Marshal Mallow,” is emblazoned on a bag of marshmallows.

That’s sort of clever. And there are a couple of amusing passages in this computer-animated musical adventure. Probably the best is the episode set in the Dainty China Country, beyond the “Great Wall of China”—a fortification made up of huge teacups, saucers, etc, protecting a population of animate China figurines and ruled over by the China Princess, voiced by Megan Hilty.

She’s a bit of a diva, but not a bad sort, and Marshal Mallow, a courtly military type, falls for her. His body being made entirely of marshmallows, he’s a good match for such a fragile lady.

The movie also offers a reasonably lively climactic battle, with Dorothy (Lea Michele) and Toto, re-summoned from Kansas, and their allies, against The Jester, the younger brother of the Wicked Witch of the West, who's cursed to wear the coxcomb forever. Martin Short lends this villain his voice, and the rest of the cast is equally impressive: Dan Aykroyd as the Scarecrow, James Belushi as the no-longer-cowardly Lion, Kelsey Grammer as the The Tin Man and Bernadette Peters as Glinda, with Oliver Platt, Brian Blessed and even Patrick Stewart in secondary roles.

Sadly all these great voices are given little to say, or sing, that’s witty or engaging. The aforementioned whimsical ideas notwithstanding, the film, adapted from a book by Roger Stanton Baum (L. Frank’s great-grandson) is mostly a flat, sluggish dud, weighed down with obligatory elements and forgettable songs—some of them co-written by Bryan Adams.

The movie has visual downsides, too. The fantasy characters aren’t bad, but the human characters represent CGI at its most charmless and creepy—the notorious “Uncanny Valley effect” at its worst. Dorothy, Auntie Em, Uncle Henry and their Kansan neighbors come across like CPR training dummies.

Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return is a painful example of the unreliability of the “dream team” approach to moviemaking: of how a well-funded, well-intentioned project stuffed with big name talent can stubbornly refuse to come to life. If it’s the only option to take your kids to at a discount theatre on a really boring afternoon, maybe you might consider it. Maybe. But you may find it has the same effect on you as the poppies outside the Emerald City.

RIP to Al Feldstein, editor of MAD Magazine in its greatest vintages and thus arguably the architect of a generation of insufferable adolescent smartasses, passed on at 88.

OF GLEE THEY SING

All I know first-hand about Glee! the TV series, other than that it’s wildly popular, is what I’ve gleaned from the parts I’ve seen of two or three episodes. I liked what I saw, more or less—the eclecticism of the musical choices & the goofy overproduction of the numbers, the sweet exuberance of the young performers, the good values didactically delivered, and the even-toned comic villainy of Jane Lynch as a bracing counterbalance to the show’s self-conscious virtuousness.

But I’m sure that there’s plenty I didn’t “get” about Glee! The 3D Concert Movie, opening today. Directed by Kevin Tancharoen, this documentary chronicles a New Jersey stop on last summer’s concert tour by the show’s cast, remaining nominally in character while they perform dorky-but-rousing versions of pop favorites, scavenged from sources ranging from Britney Spears to the Beatles to Streisand, and performed in idiosyncratic arrangements.

Most of the performers seem like they’re trying a little too hard, in the Star Search/Up With People mode, but that has its own charm, within limits; it’s as if they’re auditioning for the right to go on living. One of them, Lea Michele, takes this to another level: She’s such a merciless crowd-pleaser that you may feel like somebody’s picked her up by the ankles and is swinging her at you like a club.

That said, I enjoyed a lot of these numbers. My favorite, I think, was Pink’s “Raise Your Glass,” bellowed by a group of young pretty-boys in traditional glee-club jackets. The incongruity between the costumes & the lyrics was strong showmanship.

Between songs, Tancharoen cuts to talking-head interviews with giddy Glee! fans outside the venue, naming their favorite character, or asserting what an unstoppable universal force for good the show is. There are also a few extended documentary sequences about fans struggling with “being different,” like a midget cheerleader in Yuba City, California, a girl with Asperger Syndrome, a gay teenage boy who was outed to the classmate on whom he had a crush. This stuff is interesting, at times harrowing—any of these strands could probably make a full-length documentary by itself.

Like most concert movies—Jonathan Demme’s great Stop Making Sense is one of the very few exceptions—Glee! The 3D Concert Movie seemed a little too long to me, & it’s a bit self-congratulatory, too. But I can’t deny that a good chunk of it made me smile & tap my foot. The 3D, by the way, is a gratuitous drag as usual—the only really amusing effects are some computer-animated fruit smoothies spilling at us during the closing credits, to the tune of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”