Tin Man (2007)

Not very long ago I was praising the SciFi channel mini-series (or newer .. SyFy). It seems that I finally got into something that it's on the opposite side and I don't even know if I should spend the time writing about it .. "Tin Man" (by the way, if somebody sees the movie and has a solid argument for the chosen title, please give me a message). Still ...

Still, the critics were relatively positive if you take a look on the awards & nominations list (especially the Emmy one). I won't enumerate them now, and I'll actually consider there were given due to the lack of options during that year maybe (because the only effectively won Emmy was just for makeup). The only aspect that I think really deserves appreciated in the whole movie is the story. We have a sort of adaptation (which actually turns into a "sequel" from some point on) of the classic Oz story by Frank Baum. "A sort of" means actually "heavily adapted" here, meaning that everything is placed in a context that's a bit more realistic than the original one, and altogether more mature. Besides that, it has enough complexity for the whole three parts of its length. As probably the classical tale is well known already I won't insist with details on that. The trailer will say more.

Unfortunately, the story is pretty much messed up by the directing (by the way, I was thinking to place on my "to view" list also SciFi's channel version of "Alice in Wonderland", but considering it has the same director I think I'll postpone it ...). There are lots of parts which could have been a bit more thoroughly treated and others that probably were better left more superficial. In my opinion, the piece of story that came out really well is the middle, the second part. I could even say that's almost on the same level with "Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince", which probably is the darkest in the series, and by far also the most dense from a psychological point of view. But again, this similarity comes especially from the story ... Because besides the directing which is flawed we have also the cast ...

The only good part about the actors in this movie is the order in which they are enumerated in the trailer. More exactely there are only two who are effectively acting and those are the first mentioned - Richard Dreyfuss si Alan Cumming. The rest .. are pretty lame. I'm not an expert in drama and generally I consider that this part in what I'm writing is purely subjective. But here ... it's so obvious that even if a part of the cast is so & so, having both good parts and maybe just a few bad ones, for the main character played by Zooey Deschanel, the outcome despite her nice blue eyes is simply horrendous. Either she's "on drugs" as somebody on an IMDb board was saying or she tried a very challenging approach for the performance with the purpose of building a more... different type of character than the classical image. But the outcome is far from interesting, ok, or any other positive qualifications ...

Technically the movie is ok, with the exception of the VFX, which despite all the nominations given sincerely they don't look like 2007, even considering that we talk about a made for TV movie. I've seen lots of better effects in older series. As a final idea, I'm waiting to see on screen something else from the same universe. For who doesn't know Frank Baum wrote more than just one book, but every time only this one was put on screen. I haven't read anything from the rest, so I don't know what potential they have though, but there is also another author. His name was Alexander Volkov, and he lived in the old USSR until the '70s. During his lifetime he adapted the first book by Baum and wrote a series of original sequels. I've read one of these (I think the first) many times when I was a kid. It's called "Urfin Joos & His Wooden Soldiers" in a close to original translation. In my opinion this is far superior as a story to the "Wizard of Oz" and I honestly believe that it would be a hit if properly put on screen. By chance I've seen earlier this year a pretty good trailer (see below) for an animated adaptation. Unfortunately if you dig a bit the web it seems to be pretty much an independent "one-man-effort", so I don't know what are the chances to come out. But who knows ...

Rating: 3 out of 5 ( ... pretty much only for the story)