Rosie Reviews: (and/or ruins) one of your favourite childhood movies.

By ROSIE WATERLAND

The Wizard of Oz is one of those classic movies that kids and adults can enjoy. And by that, I mean it’s like one of those cartoons that kids love without realising there’s a whole bunch of dirty jokes that the adults are laughing at.

I know this because I just watched it again as an adult, and came to the stark realisation that The Wizard of Oz is basically an epic thriller about a notorious crime gang, filled with murder, intrigue and psychopaths. With munchkins for the kids.

Allow me to explain.

So there’s this chick called Dorothy. She lives on a black and white farm in Kansas with her dog Toto and her aunt and uncle. Everybody is busy working all the time, and that leaves poor Dorothy and Toto feeling quite lonely. Dorothy could help her family with stuff that needs to be done around the farm, but instead she’s like, “Nah, I’ll just walk around looking sad and singing about rainbows.” Kind of selfish, if you ask me, but whatevs.

Toto bites some crazy neighbour on a bike and she threatens to have him put down. Dorothy is all, “Woe is my life! I’m running away!” But just before she leaves, a big tornado comes, picks up her entire house, and drops it in a colourful land where lots of little people sing everything they say.

It turns out Dorothy’s house landed on some chick called the Wicked Witch of the East, and she dies. So technically, and I don’t mean to nit-pick here, but Dorothy is kind of a murderer. Or she should at least be up on charges of manslaughter.

The East Witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, is kind of devo. Like, her sister just died. She’s understandably very pissed at Dorothy. There’s also a massive inheritance involved: The East Witch has a pair of shoes made entirely of freaking rubies. If you sold those on ebay, you’d get like, Ocean’s 11-level kind of money.

The West Witch tries to take the shoes, but her other sister Glinda turns up, and is all, “You can’t have the ruby shoes – I’m giving them to Dorothy.” And the West Witch is all, “WTF? The East Witch was my best friend/sister and she just DIED. Let me have her shoes!”

But Glinda is all, “LOL, no. Now piss off.”

So Dorothy puts the West Witch’s rightful inheritance from the sister she murdered on her feet. Then she heads off down a yellow brick road to find some wizard who Glinda says can send her back to her black and white farm.

Just as an FYI, this post is sponsored by Telstra. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100% authentic and written in their own words.

Glinda flies away in a bubble, and you can’t help but think that someone who has the power to fly in a bubble probably also has the power to send Dorothy home to Kansas, but it’s none of my business, I suppose.

Dorothy meets a brainless scarecrow, a heartless tin man, and a lion who talks like he needs some major speech therapy. They all go looking for the wizard together. The West Witch, determined to get her million-dollar inheritance from the chick who killed her sister, chases them the whole time. And who can blame her, to be honest?

She eventually drugs them with poppies and tries to kill them with evil flying monkeys, but at the last second Dorothy realises that water causes her skin to melt. Dorothy officially completes her second murder of the day, this one a little more intentional than the last. Crime sure is a slippery slope.

The crime gang make it to the wizard’s castle, but he turns out to be just some random crazy man with a projector. Not unlike my year 7 maths teacher. He barely has adequate clothing, let alone the ability to send Dorothy back to Kansas.  He feels bad though, so he gives each of them some random presents that are not even close to what they actually wanted. Kind of like when you really wanted a Tamagotchi for Christmas and your cheap parents got you a Tamagorpcho instead.

He says he’ll try and get Dorothy home in his hot air balloon, but it’s kind of a relief when it accidentally flies off without her because he really seems a little dodgy.

At this point Glinda turns up again, and tells Dorothy that she has the power to get home herself. All she has to do is click the million-dollar ruby shoes together.

It’s now abundantly clear that Glinda is an evil torturous mastermind, who used Dorothy to murder both her sisters, then left her to run around Oz in constant danger, even though she could have sent her home the moment she got there.

Anybody else kind of feel like Dorothy killed the wrong witch?

Dorothy says goodbye to her crime gang. And she tells the Scarecrow in front of everyone that she’s going to miss him the most, which is kind of rude, in my opinion. She leaves, and wakes up in Kansas surrounded by her family. Not surprisingly, the million-dollar ruby shoes are gone. No doubt cashed-in by Glinda on her way to Vegas.

I give The Wizard of Oz 5 out of 5 #StarlightStars, purely because I think Glinda may be one of the great unsung villians of our time. It’s like an epic crime thriller that’s okay to watch with the kids. Genius.

What other movies would you like Rosie to review?

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