Review: Tin Man
By Teresa Jusino
As much as I bemoan the dearth of original stories in film and television in favor of remakes or adaptations, I still appreciate that there is a place for quality retellings. When done well, a remake, adaptation, or retelling feels like an original work, allowing you to experience the source material in a way you weren’t able to otherwise. The film Adaptation, for example, is successful because it takes the source material (the non-fiction book, The Orchid Thief) and completely turns it on its head, telling not only the story Susan Orlean relates in the original book, but that of Charlie Kaufman as he adapts it, and of a fictional Kaufman twin brother who…well…writes a formulaic screenplay and gets shot. When I saw the ads for Tin Man, I was immediately intrigued. A modern retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (yes, the book, not the film) seemed rife with possibility. It’s a shame that the possibility never reached its full potential.
Tin Man tells the story of a girl named DG (get it?), a motorcycle-riding waitress in a rural Kansas diner. She wants to go over the rainbow, er, to Australia (Oz – get it?), because she wants more than a quiet life in Kansas can offer. Little does she know that an evil sorceress in another dimension has other plans for her…
As the story unfolds, the viewer knows what to expect. After all, this is a story we’ve seen or heard many times since childhood. There is a journey down a brick road. There are men without a brain, a heart, and courage. There is a wizard and a wicked witch. However, these elements are modernized, and some more successfully than others.
For example, the man without a brain isn’t a scarecrow, but a man nicknamed Glitch, who had his brain removed by the sorceress for “what he knows”, and spends most of the film with a zipper holding his skull shut. Glitch was successful in large part due to a wonderful performance by Alan Cumming, who manages to both channel Ray Bolger and create an entirely new, well-rounded character. I hope he’s remembered at the next Emmys, as he was the best part of the miniseries.
Also interesting was the familial relationship between DG and the sorceress, Azkadellia (played by an appropriately evil, albeit unfortunately costumed Kathleen Robertson). The flashback sequences between these two characters as children were the most developed part of the story. It was a shame to see the opportunity they were setting up squandered.
Many of the modernized elements didn’t work so well. The wizard, or “The Mystic Man”, played by Richard Dreyfus, had surprisingly little to do with the overall plot of the story and was inconsequential. The magical dimension was called “The O.Z.” – for The Outer Zone – and I couldn’t help but imagine that Mischa Barton would turn up somewhere. And then, there was Zooey Deschanel. I’ve wanted to go on enjoying her as an actress since Almost Famous, but she has yet to find a role that allows her to shine the way that that one did. As DG, she was extremely bland. Much of that has to do with the writing – a motorcycle does not a well-rounded character make – but I wasn’t invested in her success or failure at all, and I have seen her brand of generic, film girl spunk before.
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The moment that totally pulled me out of the entire experience, though, was a moment when DG encounters the Dorothy Gale we know from the book. I had been watching Tin Man following DG as the Dorothy character. And then, suddenly, she’s not? It was an overly-meta moment that was not only unnecessary, but confused the storytelling.
The weirdness of Tin Man kept me curious over the course of the three parts, but when they were over I wasn’t satisfied. The novelty had worn off, and I realized that this wasn’t an improvement on the original source material, nor was it as good. If you’re solely interested in flashy scenery and special effects, catch Tin Man in its inevitable repeats on the SciFi Channel. If you’re interested in well-written characters or coherent, interesting storytelling, you won’t find it here.
TERESA JUSINO entered the world kicking and screaming in 1979 and hasn’t stopped screaming since. An actress, writer, and producer, Teresa’s work has been seen in several venues and mediums. As an actress, she has appeared at various venues in NYC and regional theater. As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is also Associate Producer for a New York theater company, Stone Soup Theater Arts, and is producing a reading series for them that runs through January. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. Also, she has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan. Yes, she knows he’s married.
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I quite liked the mythos of Dorothy Gale being the King Arthur of the O.Z. She provides what seems to be an almsot atheistic land with a legend, a heroine and a sort of goddess. The real matriarchal bent of the royal family was also a striking difference from the deference to the Wizard in the original work, which I also enjoyed.
I completely agree that Alan Cumming was fabulous. If they were to continue on with the stories of Frank Baum’s Oz, he would HAVE to be included somehow.