A warning to all friends of Dorothy—by which I mean all fans of the MGM classic "The Wizard of Oz": Forget the rainbow. Sci Fi Channel's trippy Tin Man goes over the top and over the edge in an audaciously bizarre, altogether curious reimagining of the L. Frank Baum fantasy.
I admire its nerve (to quote the lovable Cowardly Lion, here transformed into a human-wolverine-psychic hybrid named Raw), and there's no question Tin Man is ambitious. But replacing "Oz"'s joyfully timeless charm with perverse irony and nightmarish, hallucinatory imagery makes this three-night miniseries more of a lavishly quirky curiosity than a keeper.
The most refreshing change: updating meek Dorothy Gale into spunky, tomboyish DG, a peevish pixie of a waitress who lives on the family farm (but is that her real family?) while realizing, "There has to be more to life than this." Zooey Deschanel gives the role such a sardonic twist it's almost as if Sarah Silverman had wandered into
read more