Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz is misguided almost from the get-go with central miscasting, a lumbering pace, and a new concept that only works in fits and starts.
The Production: 2.5/5
Adapted from a hit 1975 Broadway show that retold the story of The Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast and a new, funky score, Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz is misguided almost from the get-go with central miscasting, a lumbering pace, and a new concept that only works in fits and starts. There is lots of talent on display, and the parts of the original Charlie Smalls stage score which have been carried over often save the day, but a lot of money and effort have been expended on a musical which just doesn’t have the satisfying payoff that one seeks in the best Broadway adaptations expanded for the silver screen.
Twenty-four-year-old Dorothy (Diana Ross) is a Harlem kindergarten teacher who is painfully shy and has never ventured south of 125th Street. On Thanksgiving night, she’s whisked up in a snow cyclone and deposited into the strange, graffiti-filled world of lower Manhattan with no clue where she is or how to get home. She’s advised by numbers runner Miss One (Thelma Carpenter) that the Wiz (Richard Pryor) in Emerald City can solve her problems and suggests to her to follow the yellow brick road to get there. Along the way she meets a scarecrow (Michael Jackson), a tin man (Nipsy Russell), and a timid lion (Ted Ross) at various venues around the five boroughs of New York, and together the quartet braves one peril after another to inevitably find their hearts’ desires.
Screenwriter Joel Schumacher has ditched William F. Brown’s Broadway libretto (to be fair, the stage musical’s weakest element: it was not among the production’s seven Tony Award wins) and instead has penned a new EST-laden parable with all of the action transpiring in various venues in New York and surrounding environs (but don’t try to make sense of the movie’s geographical mapping which jumps around from Flushing Meadows to Coney Island, the George Washington Bridge, various subways, 5th Avenue, and the World Trade Center, many recreated in the Astoria Studios in Queens). Dorothy’s quest for home is the same, of course, and her three friends are all looking for the same traits from the original Baum story as they “ease on down the road,” but Schumacher’s script trundles along haphazardly looking for different spots to stage the numbers, not aided by director Sidney Lumet’s first time helming a musical, a gargantuan task that he doesn’t handle with any lightness, finesse, or imagination. Big set pieces like the arrival in Emerald City go on forever in alternating shades of green, red, and gold with spectacular couture wardrobes on the hundreds of extras but without any interesting dancing from choreographer Louis Johnson, and one begins to notice there (and earlier in Dorothy’s arrival number “He’s the Wiz” with the graffiti Munchkins) that Lumet loves long shots of the hundreds of extras but doesn’t think to move the camera interestingly within these formations to give them some life.
Yes, Diana Ross was a big star when The Wiz was filmed and ached to be a part of the movie, but she’s just too old for the role, completely unbelievable as an innocent waif searching for her life’s purpose. In the late 20th century, no one living in Harlem and employed in a public school could possibly be that sheltered, and the film suffers from her participation, no matter how many songs they give her or how many tears she sheds (and she sheds a lot of them in this movie sometimes ruining the effectiveness of her singing in songs like “Be a Lion” and the climactic “Home”). Nineteen year-old Michael Jackson is just right for the Scarecrow: soft-voiced and gentle and given “You Can’t Win,” a more upbeat introductory tune that was cut from the stage production during tryouts in favor of the more introspective “I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday.” Television personality Nipsy Russell doesn’t have quite enough voice for the Tin Man, but he uses tried and true vaudeville inflections to sell “If I could Feel” and especially “Slide Some Oil on Me.” Lion Ted Ross won the featured Tony Award for his Broadway performance, and he’s fine here, too, if a trifle dwarfed by the mammoth production. The musical gets off to an uncertain start with the forgettable ballad “The Feeling That We Had” (no shade on the Aunt Em of Theresa Merritt who does it proud) that the movie doesn’t correct and even lessens its impact since she directs it to the entire family at the Thanksgiving table and not just to Dorothy. On the other side of the film is the Wicked Witch Evillene of Mabel King presiding over the movie’s most exhilarating sequence as she whips her sweat shop workers into shape with the gospel-infused “No Bad News” and then melts away while they celebrate with Dorothy and company to “Brand New Day/Everybody Rejoice.” It, too, suffers a bit from music supervisor Quincy Jones letting the festivities extend past their effectiveness, but there is no denying the singing and dancing here are the jolt that the movie could have used a lot more of. Richard Pryor’s fraudster Wiz doesn’t sing, so his participation in the film seems rather anticlimactic. Not at all anticlimactic, however, is the Glinda of Lena Horne’s full-bodied and dynamic reprise of “If You Believe” that’s a genuine showstopper.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film is framed at its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, something of a surprise that such a lavish, large-scale musical of the era wouldn’t have utilized Panavision widescreen. The 2160p/1080p images on the UHD and Blu-ray discs are pristine, the UHD aided by Dolby Vision HDR giving a bit of heft and sparkle to the hues of the Oscar-nominated cinematography. Skin tones are always believable, and the lion, tin man, and scarecrow wardrobe is full of delectable detail. The movie has been divided into 20 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The Dolby Atmos audio track seems a bit of overkill for the film, but while the overhead channels don’t get any more unusual use than the other surrounds in terms of music and sound effects, the entire soundstage is certainly filled throughout the presentation occasionally with split surround effects in a separate channel in the rear or front. Dialogue and solo singing seem rooted to the center channel. There are no age-related problems with hiss or other anomalies to spoil the aural experience.
Special Features: 3/5
Audio Commentary: film historians Michael Gillespie and Alfred Martin, both enthusiastic fans of The Wiz, offer their thoughts on the film’s historical achievements and manage to excuse its many flaws while playing up its merits and accomplishments. Fans of the movie will enjoy hearing the film wildly celebrated, but this isn’t objective film analysis.
Diana Ross Interview (7:57, SD): critic/interviewer David Sheehan delivers a rather scathing review of the film at its 1978 premiere before sitting down with whom he considered its greatest asset, its star Diana Ross. Knowing this is the final theatrical film she’d ever make gives added irony to some of the comments she speaks about her hopes for her future movie projects.
Sidney Lumet Interview (11:59, SD) filmed in 2001 for a Quincy Jones documentary, the director speaks glowingly of his relationship with musician Quincy Jones and their work together on The Pawnbroker and The Wiz, and he even takes full credit for the latter film’s failure.
Theatrical Trailer (3:23, SD)
Enclosed Pamphlet: contains a cast and crew list, information on the video and audio transfers, and a historical and analytical look at the film.
Overall: 3/5
After its initial flop in theaters, Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz has been reevaluated by many in the years since its first release. Personally, NBC’s The Wiz Live! offers a much truer and more entertaining version of the show than this 1978 musical version despite its star-laden cast, but fans will certainly appreciate the care that has been taken with the production here and will likely enjoy the ultra-high definition experience.
Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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