Man, forget Fleming, this film and "Gone with the Wind" bled Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dry, so if they didn't succeed, Fleming would have his life to worry about more than his money (He made this film and "Gone with the Wind" in one year, so it's not like he had all that much time to spend on having a life). Man, this trippy flick has always been mighty popular, and I'm betting Victor Fleming was glad of that, because if I'm going to make time to knock something the same year I did "Gone with the Wind", I better get paid back well. No, this film can't possibly be that terribly old, because I had always figured that the '60s was the best time to get the type of dope which just had to have gone into this film, or at least into the minds of this film's viewers back in 1939. It's good that she had that going for her after this film, because she was cuter at 16, and if you think that that's kind of weird to say, this film is so old that I think that it came out at a time when 16-year-olds were already married, with children, and a place in the Senate of the Roman Empire or something.
We're off to see the wizard, the adequately entertaining, but somewhat dated and narratively thin 'Wizard of Oz'!" Yeah, they might be giving this film a bit more credit than it deserves just for being old, as well as innovative for its time, even when it comes to tone, because, let me tell you, when I was a kid, even I got kind of freaked out by the flying monkeys, and in 1939, I bet that they left the grown men stuttering like the Cowardly Lion for the next couple Judy Garland films, though that may have just been Garland's legs after she got good and grown up.