Tin Man

This version, while imaginative and ambitious--as Halmi's sumptuous visions almost invariably are--is less successful.

Once we've all acknowledged there really was no need to remake "The Wizard of Oz" because the original creators did a pretty good job back in 1939, it's safe to admit that the way it's been handled in Tin Man, a new miniseries, is a lot of fun.

Tin Man’s heart is in the right place, even if the execution of the story evokes, from time to time, creakiness of the metal man’s limbs.

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.

While the preening and the chewed scenery from the cast are at times glorious to behold, there is no substance to wrap our heads around, no one to really root for

It's a dour retelling of the L. Frank Baum story, and it just keeps sinking further and further into pointless thematic complexity and visual density.

There is a point to this mess, but what it is, I can't say.