The Wizard of the Emerald City Review: No Brain, No Heart, No Movie

Clicking My Heels Just to Leave the Theater: The Wizard of the Emerald City Review

I wanted to love this movie. Truly. I was ready to hand over my heart, my brain, and even my courage to The Wizard of the Emerald City. I had the kids hyped, I avoided spoilers, and I walked into the theater with one belief: no one could possibly mess up Oz.

Well, turns out... they could. And did.

🧁 Not Oz, Not Dorothy, Not Cool

First, a little reality check: this isn’t The Wizard of Oz. Not even close. What we get is The Wizard of the Emerald City—an adaptation of the Russian version by Alexander Volkov. Hardcore fantasy fans might tell you it’s different, but trust me, it’s basically a Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V job from Baum’s original, with names shuffled around to dodge copyright. Dorothy becomes Ellie, Toto becomes Totoshka (but also Toto again?), and the rest is straight-up déjà vu.

The filmmakers clearly hoped you wouldn’t notice. They didn’t even bother clarifying it in the marketing. Surprise! You paid for Oz, and got an Eastern European remix without the courtesy of subtitles.

💸 Big Budget, Tiny Imagination

You’d think a movie like this, with all its money and marketing, would at least look magical. Spoiler: it doesn’t. The Emerald City? More like Budget Forest Adventure Park. Honestly, parts of it looked like someone filmed it on a slightly foggy morning in a mildly pretty suburb.

I’m not saying it’s ugly. I’m just saying… I’ve seen more enchanting scenery on my way to IKEA. You’ve got one of the most iconic fantasy settings in literary history, and you give us the local community forest preserve with a Snapchat filter slapped on top? Miss me with that.

📱 A Selfie in the Field of Poppies

Now let’s talk about Ellie, our heroine. She’s annoying. And not “fun annoying” like early 2000s sitcom characters—just frustratingly, painfully unrelatable. When she stopped mid-chase to say, “Let’s take a selfie!” while fantasy-tigers (or whatever those were) were trying to eat her, I gave up. Fully. Spiritually. Emotionally.

She starts the movie obsessed with her phone and ends the same way. No character growth, no emotional arc—just one long uninterrupted whine about WiFi. I think the filmmakers were trying to make her relatable to Gen Alpha. What they made was a character even kids wanted to leave behind in Kansas.

🫀 Missing: Heart, Brain, and Direction

This movie somehow manages to lack everything that made The Wizard of Oz timeless. There's no heart. No brain. No courage. It’s a beat-for-beat retelling without the whimsy, wit, or wonder. Every scene feels like a checklist. The dialog? Dull. The jokes? Nonexistent. The tone? Dead on arrival.

It’s scared to be edgy, too safe to be fresh, and too full of itself to be fun. It tries to look “woke,” but in doing so, it just misses the point entirely. Being inclusive or modern doesn't mean removing soul, personality, or conflict. It means understanding your audience—and this movie simply doesn’t.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family Movie… Or Family Trap?

Here’s the part that really stings. I dragged my kids to this. I pitched it as “a movie from my world”—a bridge from Minecraft and Brawl Stars to something older, deeper, meaningful. And I watched their little faces go from excited… to confused… to full-on "Mom, please never do this again."

They were right.

🎞️ A Cultural Symptom, Not Just a Bad Film

This movie is more than just a weak fantasy flick. It’s a symptom—of modern media’s obsession with reinventing the wheel, even when the original rides just fine. We’re so eager to “update” classics, to inject agendas, to put our names on someone else’s greatness, that we forget the greatest achievement sometimes is simply not screwing it up.

You don’t need to remake everything. And you certainly don’t need to slap a shiny filter on a beloved story and pretend it’s new. If you don’t love the source material enough to honor it, step away from the yellow brick road.

🌈 Verdict: Somewhere Beyond Redeemable

So how far is this movie from the magic of the 1939 original? It’s somewhere beyond the rainbow—and beyond saving. You’d need a wizard, a miracle, and a rewrite to bring this thing home.

But hey, there’s always Return to Oz. That one had actual nightmare fuel and still respected the lore.

Land of Geek Rating: 1.5 out of 10

Yup. It hurts to say, but this one barely escapes a natural 1.

We reserve the lowest ratings for true disasters, and while The Wizard of the Emerald City may not be the worst fantasy film ever made, it comes frighteningly close. It’s not offensively bad—just painfully boring, soulless, and a textbook example of how not to handle a beloved legacy.

✅ Pros

(If we must…)

• It ends eventually.
• Kids now understand why you keep saying “they don’t make them like they used to.”
• Toto is kind of cute? (Not enough to matter.)

That's it. No more. Not even the visuals redeem it.

❌ Cons

• False advertising: Marketed like a remake of The Wizard of Oz, but really a bootleg adaptation of a Russian copy.
• Flat visuals: Big budget, zero imagination. Oz shouldn’t look like your local park.
• Unbearable main character: Ellie is annoying, shallow, and doesn’t grow—literally or emotionally.
• Zero heart, zero brain, zero courage: The movie misses every core theme of the original story.
• No humor, no charm: Lifeless dialogue and missed opportunities across the board.
• A waste of nostalgia: Instead of honoring the legacy, it buries it under mediocrity.
• Kids were bored: And that’s the ultimate sin for a family fantasy film.

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