The movie opens with four people who can't get their lives together all coming to the conclusion that each of them are missing some crucial element that would pull everything together... "A heart, A brain, A home... Da nerve" etc etc.
So together they embark on a long arduous journey to a far off capital city to ask the "Wizard" for help. This Wizard, by the way, seems a lot like an emperor to me, with subjects who are at once in awe of him and at the same time seem to fear him deeply. Our travelers eventually learn that the things they need cannot be given to them by some head of state... rather they must be found within themselves... indeed the entire journey was a waste of everyone's time, since each of the characters learns that they had whatever it was they sought all along.
To make matters worse, they are used by the very government they came to for help. They are promised exactly the help they seek if only they will perform a nearly impossible task, only to discover that when they return, task completed, this government never intended to help them in the first place.
And what about that Wizard... the head of state that so many seemed to fear and worship in equal measure... the man to whom so many had entrusted every last detail of their lives? Well he turned out to be just a man after all... and not a very impressive man at that. Those who have treated the election of Obama as the second coming would do well to remember that lesson.
Oh and by the way, those people who live in the Emerald City are a bunch of lazy welfare no-goodniks. "Ha Ha Ha. Ho Ho Ho. and a couple of Tra La Las... that's how we laugh the day away in the Merry Old Land of Oz"???
The only citizens who seem to have jobs are the barbers who cut the Lion's hair and that tower guard who, frankly, is about as intimidating as JM J. Bullock (must've been an Affirmative-Action hire, that one)... I don't think I'd want to live in a city where THAT guy is the first line of defense. Anyway, despite their apparent idleness, the citizens of the Emerald City dress in fancy clothes and live in a castle built of, well emerald... on the backs of taxpayers of Munchkinland no doubt!
And when they're threatened by the Wicked Witch do they proudly stand on the castle walls as one in defiance of tyranny? Well no, they all run screaming for cover... and it's up to an American teenager who weighs eighty pounds soaking wet with rocks in her pockets to waltz right into the Witch's lair and kill her when there is an entire army available back at the Emerald City that you would assume would be available for the job... The Emerald City is a lot like France in that respect (recall what was going on in Europe in 1939)... which sort of explains the effete Tower Guard, I suppose.
But I guess "ha ha ha, ho ho ho, and a couple of tra la las" is how the soldiers of Oz laugh the day away as well.
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