Through two months, 2013 has been a pretty awful year for major motion pictures at the box office thus far. If you look at a rundown of the year’s biggest films to date, you’ll see that only Identity Thief, a comedic caper about Jason Bateman and Rex Reed’s tiny penis chasing Melissa McCarthy all over the place, has topped the $100 million mark this year.

That means that star-driven action movies like A Good Day to Die Hard ($63 million), Snitch ($31 million) and Parker ($17 million) have been big old turkey turds at the U.S. box office, while unusual entries like the comedic zombie tale Warm Bodies ($63 million) and horror films like Mama ($71 million) and Safe Haven ($62 million) have been surprising successes. Wait, what? Safe Haven isn’t a horror film? But it stars Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough and is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that.

The biggest concern* lies with the year’s first huge budget film, Jack the Giant Slayer, which had a $195 million budget and has only grossed $43 million through its first two weeks. However, before any Hollywood execs go burying themselves to the neck into mountains of cocaine, Oz the Great and Powerful may have pulled us out of this year’s early funk, grossing $80 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, with an additional $65 million overseas. Although, while $145 million might sound awesome, Oz cost $215 million to make, so Disney would probably appreciate it if you took your brats to see it 12 more times.

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(L-R: Rachel Weisz, Renee Zellweger and Mila Kunis)

Opening Everywhere: Oz the Great and Powerful, Dead Man Down

FilmDrunk Suggests: This is a really, really low time for movies, as I’ve scrolled the box office list of movies currently in theaters several times today and am hardly interested in any of these films. Even worse, I have three 2-for-1 Groupon vouchers to use at my local theater and aside from Dead Man Down, I’ve got nothing to watch. Nothing, damn it!

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“What has one thumb and looks like it’s bored to be in this movie?”

There are some really great things about Oz the Great and Powerful and some really bad things, but at the very least, it’s not the forgettable trifle I expected it to be.

I liked Oz the Great and Powerful, and I mean that only in the most defensive-sounding way possible. It’s hard to even write this review without coming off a huge Sam Raimi apologist. Raimi has this highly-saturated, schlocky aesthetic that’s a little melodramatic and not quite realistic, but never quite camp, which a lot of people understandably hate. Whereas Tarantino almost always puts clear signposts to indicate when he’s being serious and when he’s being tongue-in-cheek, Sam Raimi’s scenes are always sort of breakdancing on the line between the two. To me this approach has always seemed a bit rock n’ roll, a way to say “yeah, this is silly but I’m doing it anyway because it’s fun.” He seems so blasé about whether you think his films are “Important” or not, and it’s refreshing.

Oz the Great and Powerful is not a great movie, but I don’t think anyone set out to make a “great movie.” I usually hate when critics use this excuse to give a movie a pass. Just because you made a bad movie on purpose I’m supposed to ignore that it’s bad? But if I look at any “comparable” title – Alice in Wonderland, The Hobbit, Snow White and the Huntsman – Oz is just much better. Even the simple idea that “Oz” might all be a figment of James Franco’s character’s imagination gives it a subtextual richness that the aforementioned films all lacked. All of them, Oz included, are essentially about magical faeries punching each other. But Oz at least hints at the idea that it’s not just about magical faeries punching each other.

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This week on the Frotcast, we’ve got Bret back, live from Manhattan and we bloop in SB Nation’s World Famous V-Logger Matt Ufford. Fun fact, Matt and I used to live together in a blog cabin in Brooklyn. This week’s topic, in honor of Sam Raimi making Oz the Great and Powerful, is the worst film of otherwise good directors. Oh yeah, we actually talked about movies in this one. And lots of other stuff too, including Matt’s favorite interviews. Enjoy.

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“Okay, maybe Truckasaurus eating piles of money was overkill.”

CGI is expensive, yo.

Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful started screening this week in advance of its Friday opening, and Disney execs are hoping it does well, because according to a new report in the New York Times, it cost $325 million to make and market. That’s not the most expensive movie we’ve ever heard of (John Carter cost an estimated $350-$400 million to make and market, for instance), and $325m is barely half James Cameron’s budget for yacht prostitutes, but it’s still more than any normal human could possibly hope to fathom. To paraphrase Mike Birbiglia John Mulaney, an easier way to make money would be to just put $325 million of cash in a room and charge people to look at it.

No movie studio would have the nerve to remake “The Wizard of Oz,” the beloved 1939 musical ranked by the Library of Congress as the most-watched film in history. But “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a Disney-produced prequel, is nearly as intrepid. The company is betting that a new twist on a story moviegoers already love will result in a hit on par with “Alice in Wonderland,” which took in more than $1 billion in 2010.

Oh, were they trying to recreate Alice in Wonderland? Gee, I couldn’t tell.

It’s a breathtaking gamble. “Oz,” at turns goofy and dark (and not a musical), cost about $325 million to make and market, according to people who worked on the movie who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with Disney. Mr. Franco has never anchored a mainstream movie before.

Hmm, well Rise of the Planet of the Apes grossed $482 million worldwide and Franco was the lead in that, unless you count Andy Serkis in a spandex suit.

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