Disappointed.

That's how most fans of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and devotees of Frank L. Baum's 14 Oz books (1900-1920) have reacted to Disney's just-released, multimillion-dollar prequel, “Oz The Great and Powerful.”

The story shows how a smooth-talking, sleight-of-hand carnival magician escapes troubles in Kansas in a balloon, survives a tornado, and lands in Oz just in time to drive off those evil witches of the East and West from controlling the Emerald City (but not to destroy the witches outright) leaving that work for Judy in the sequel “Wizard of Oz.”

Movie critics have savaged “Oz.” Check out the websites of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Thin and uninspiring plot line, over-dependence on digital gimmickry, insipid acting, none of the courageous fortitude of a hero or heroine: the stuff of true fairy tales.

NPR is kinder, just questioning whether the movie needed to be made. Moviegoer comments below each review range from the scalpel to mild enjoyment.

I saw “Oz” last Friday at The Harbor Theatre. Editor Joe Gelarden asked me to write a review as my mom, Margaret Hamilton, played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 “Wizard.”

Being trained as a kindergarten teacher (Wheelock '23) before acting, my mother had a unique perspective on what made the “Wizard” successful. So I thought it might be interesting to try to paraphrase what her reaction might have been to “Oz The Great."

She'd have been kinder but more precise than the Times, Post or NPR. She'd have said that “Oz” simply lacked emotional “tug,” key to a movie's success. She always said the “Wizard of Oz” had two.

First, “Wizard's” plot line was so enticing that children bought it hook, line and sinker and relished in it. Parents, having once believed too, were thrilled to see their kids so react, curled up in their laps in front of a TV set year after year, and so encouraged them and their children and grandchildren to keep watching until today.

“Wizard” is the most seen movie in history and a national past-time. Child delight is a great “tug” on parents and keeps them coming back. Mom would worry that “Oz's” plot line was too weak and meandering to develop generation-to-generation loyalty among children (and thus parents) to sustain it past this year's movie season.

Second, Mom believed the underlying theme of Wizard was not the heralded “There's No Place Like Home” which Judy clung to throughout her search for a way back to her Kansas farmstead. That was a child's reaction, wanting desperately to go home in times of trouble, and it certainly gets through to most children movie-goers.

However, for adults, the “tug” was something deeper and more sophisticated. In the mid-20th century we were still a nation of immigrants, settlers, mobile job seekers, psychologically, if not in reality.

We all longed for home, if only in our dreams, But we knew we could never go home, whether due to geographic remoteness or more likely time lapsed. (Mom, brought up in a close traditional family in Cleveland, Ohio, was constantly commuting between Broadway and Hollywood when not doing regional and summer stock theater in between, yet often was wistful for her childhood.)

Judy manifested that “tug” on the screen, that yearning for home by mid-20th century adults. The Wizard told Judy there was no way home. Yet, in true fairy tale fashion, Judy discovered she could and actually did get home, vicariously fulfilling our dreams for a brief magical moment.  

We left the movie theater, still wistful and nostalgic but a bit happier for that moment. Mom would probably argue there just was no such magic, no such deep-seated adult “tug” in “Oz The Great and Powerful.” Hence, she'd be cautious about its life expectancy.

But, she'd also say, take the kids to see the movie for what it is: a colorful, if disjointed adventure tale, as long as it was still around.

Hamilton Meserve, a Newagen resident, is the only child of the actress Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” one of 70 movies and stage plays she appeared in as a character actress. She was a frequent summer resident in the 1960s and 1970s on Newagen's Cape Island which she and Hamilton jointly purchased in 1961. She died in 1985.