So my mom,my brother,and myself all went to see this film today in the cinemas as the other film we were suppose to see wasn't on until 15:35 and it was too late for us to see it. So we decided to watch Legend of OZ: Dorothy's Return. Now before I start this review I have to say that as a 23 year old woman I absolutely love Animated movies in fact its my favourite movie genre as I love all the effects and effort that is put into making animated movies like Frozen,Tangled,Shrek,The Lion King,whether its Hand-drawn or not I love watching animated movies.

So this one I had very low expectations on,I thought it looked stupid and generic and like a film you see going straight to DVD as it was like a Barbie film,but I was wrong,now its not the best film of all time,but its entertaining for the kids as well as the adults who are big kids at heart.

SO what is this about well let's dive in. Dorothy Graine( voiced by and sung by Lea Michele from Glee in her first animated debut) is whisked away to OZ once again thanks to a magical rainbow that transports her and her dog to OZ as an evil Jester wants to take over by making puppets out of real people. SO Scarecrow insists on Dorothy's help and she agrees. Here she meets a obese owl who helps her and later a marshmallow guard(voiced by Hugh Dancy who also sings in this movie as he sung in the 2004 film Ella Enchanted)who arrests Dorothy and the Owl as they ate candy(btw did anyone think that the candy scene was like Sugar Rush in Wreck It Ralph)and when the marshmallow guard finds out that Dorothy is known as the greatest person ever to defeat the wicked witch he agrees to let her and the owl go. So they go off to defeat the jester(voiced by Martin Short who was in Barbie's Princess & The Pauper and he as in the 2003 Disney film Treasure Planet)who is the wicked witches brother.

So can Dorothy get Glinda(Bernadete Peters from Anastasia as she voiced Sophie in that film) the white fairy back? and undo the spell that turned her into a puppet?

Overall I found this film sweet and nice. The animation is nice to look at,the backgrounds look great and the voice acting was good too(Dan Akyrod from Ghost busters as the Scarecrow,Kelsey Grammar who also worked with Bernadette Peters in Anastasia and he was Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons,and James Belushi from Curly Sue as the Scarecrow are also in this film). The music is great(Bryan Adams who is a singer who did the likes of Spirit of the Stallion and Racing Stripes) provides the music for this film. If you got kids than this is for you,or if you consider yourself an animated fan like me than check it out. For those who hate musicals and sugary sweet cartoons avoid.

6.5/10

I'm a parent who has 3 animated movies in his top 10 favorite movies of all time (Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph & Incredibles) so I'm a good candidate to review this film objectively.

I took my 8 yr old son and 9 yr old daughter to see it. Final analysis?

Me & my son: It was o.k. My daughter: I liked it a lot!

I think most kids will enjoy this movie a lot. I was moderately entertained, which is more than I can say for a lot of the animated drivel that passes through our theater. I give it a 6 out of 10. It certainly doesn't deserve to bomb at the box office. I thought it was better than mindless sequels like Rio 2 or even Despicable Me 2, which I didn't enjoy much. But here's a full breakdown of my review:

VOICE ACTING 8/10: Martin Short was outstanding, and raises the score here. Kelsey Grammar was also very good. I love Dan Akroyd, but his portrayal of Scarecrow left a lot to be desired. Jim Belushi and Lea Michele were adequate in their roles, if not rather forgettable.

ANIMATION 6/10: The animation definitely has a sub-par appearance compared to large studio productions (such as Disney or Pixar) but it isn't anywhere near direct to DVD levels. I could tell the animators put their heart and soul into this film, they just didn't have the tools to make it look amazing. Dorothy's animation is a distraction, but many of the non-human characters were great. There was a lot of attention to detail but, unfortunately, the movie suffers from its low budget appearance. People do judge a movie by its cover and it suffers here.

PLOT/STORY 5/10: There's nothing new or interesting about this story. It progressed from point A to point B without any real surprises or a sense of what was propelling the characters forward.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT 5/10: The villain was the best part of this film. Excellently portrayed by Martin Short, he was a lot of fun to watch. Dorothy and most of her companions were pretty flat and uninteresting. Marshall Mallow was interesting but his relationship to his love interest seemed forced and a little contrived.

MUSIC/SONGS 6/10: The songs were technically proficient and had a professional feel to their production. Unfortunately, they were also rather uninspiring and not very catchy. There's no way anyone would be able to hum or sing any of those songs after just one viewing, as one "reviewer" claimed, they were just too unremarkable.

I find it hard to trust the 1st dozen or so reviews on some films found at this sight. Of course I could be mistaken but, I saw this film and found it to be full of nonsense and trite cliché dialog. With the mega cast that participated in the making of this film I expected a much better and more interesting story to be explored in this sequel classic.

As I watched the various characters enter the beginning scenes I felt they were very cardboard like. The few comedic scenes seemed almost too childish even for children. As to the animation, it was not to my liking. It seemed that it was taken from generic Saturday morning cartoons. It was bland and even boring to a degree.

Lastly I noticed that production costs of this animated film were surprisingly much more than I expected it to be. Nearly a million bucks a minute. I felt that for that kind of mega bucks this should have been a higher quality of product. The next few weeks will show weather the movie goers buy and or embrace this less than stellar movie.

Not every children's Animated film can be a "Frozen" or a "Finding Nemo" but they should at least aim for that quality and level of product.