Much like the live-action "Alice in Wonderland" from 2010, Disney's "Oz the Great and Powerful" is a CGI-overdose with only occasional moments of story and character. Comparing this prequel to the original "Wizard of Oz" only makes the experience worse.

Best to think of it how Disney surely thought of it: An empty calorie children's product.

"Oz" didn't have to be this way. Sam Raimi (the original "Spider-man" trilogy) can be a capable and stylish director, and there's plenty of literary source material from L. Frank Baum to tell a compelling story.

In fact, "Oz" opens with plenty of potential. In a fun black-and-white sequence, we meet James Franco as a womanizing traveling magician. His tricks onstage are as good as the tall tales he uses to make the ladies swoon.

Franco excels in these opening minutes, establishing a flawed but compelling character that could benefit from the moral repercussions that often go along with a whimsical adventure.

When a tornado arrives to send Oz on his adventure, the movie loses its footing in more ways than one. Arriving in the world of Oz, color bursts from the screen... in the form of artificial-looking CGI landscapes. The story pauses to show several minutes of colorful giant plants, and not a single one appears as if it is sharing the same space with the live-action Franco.

Franco appears overwhelmed too, as his character shows little of the flare from the opening sequence. It doesn't help that he's surrounded by a compilation of miscast actresses and unnatural CGI creations, including a talking monkey (voiced by Zach Braff), a living China doll (voiced by Joey King), and three beautiful and seemingly friendly witches (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams).

Knowledge of the original story dictates there will be some wickedness down that yellow brick road, and without giving anything away, the actress stuck with the maniacal laughing is also trapped in an underdeveloped origin story.

Really though, does it even matter how one becomes a Wicked Witch of the West? Perhaps in a movie that better executes the transformation, but not here.

"Oz" slogs from one shallow character introduction to the next, all focusing on their reactions to meeting Franco's wayward magician. Everyone believes Oz is the great and powerful wizard who restores peace to the land, and Oz, for a while, uses the prophecy to flirt with attractive witches.

When the movie finally reaches its climax, Franco awakens from his slumber and Raimi stages a series of compelling winks to the original "Wizard of Oz." Still, after more than an hour of vacant computer photography, the new "Oz" seems about as lost as a flying broom without a witch.

The visual effects in "Oz" are obviously calibrated for 3D, but at some point movie studios should realize that spending $200 million on story-deficient floating images isn't the best use of their resources. Sure, with a visionary director, beloved source material and a few kiddie jokes, the end product is going to be serviceable. But for all that money, shouldn't we get something better?

Apparently not even in fairy tales.

Grade: C+

Ticket Stubs is sponsored by the Hayden Cinema Six Theater. Showtimes at www.HaydenCinema6.com. Tyler Wilson can be reached at [email protected].