Wicked | Review | The Film Blog

★★★

There is little in it Wickedthe unjustified and long adaptation of the first act of the eponymous musical by Jon M. Chu, likely to convert the unconverted. It’s a spellbinding affair but not quite transformationally spellbinding. Those who love Wickedwill adopt the film in kind. It offers excellent performances, extravagant sets and frankly extraordinary attention to detail. Those who don’t, take heed: Despite running almost as long as the entire Broadway show, including intermission, Chu’s Wicked only manages to reach the series’ famous halftime banger, “Defying Gravity,” through the credits roll. Part two is twelve months after its release. It’s a Jacksonian breakup, either distressing or frustrating, depending on personal inclinations. Both, really.

As a double-cross agnostic, both of the show and its success, the flimsy politics and semi-forgettable tunes – only a few truly foil the theater – generally lean me towards the latter camp. This is my bias. As far as the film is concerned, there’s no way an hour of superfluous padding can fix the plot’s core flaws. Animal activism is undoubtedly an interesting path. Its use as a tool for criticizing populism, for its part, will find a particularly important resonance with a public at the end of 2024.

And yet, WickedThe execution is brutal and the handling of unconvincing character arcs is muddled. Of course, this didn’t faze the legions of fans who propelled Wicked from Broadway to global sensation. The musical is just behind Disney’s Lion King in the all-time rankings. A film adaptation has long seemed inevitable.

The story, taken from Gregory Maguire’s original 1995 novel, rewrites the book by L. Frank Baum. The Wizard of Oz through the prism of the witches of Oz. Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba, Baum’s Wicked Witch of the West and Maguire’s tragic heroine. She is formidable and burning with the pain of a long-suppressed wound. Pop megastar Ariana Grande is pretty much Glinda – originally known as Galinda – the golden girl from Oz, reimagined as magically castrated and comically vain. The two meet at the prestigious Shiz University, an early enmity blossoming into a sincere friendship after learning that each has much to learn from the other. Other students include Ethan Slater’s Boq, who craves Glinda’s attention, and Jonathan Bailey’s dashing metrosexual Fiyero, who can’t escape it.

Elphaba’s magical prowess is evident as is the uniqueness of her pea-green skin. Flashbacks to a troubled childhood foreshadow the bullying Elphaba will experience at Shiz and the ostracism she will ultimately face when she is outcast as a so-called Wicked Witch. However, handpicked by the school’s supreme witch, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), Elphaba soon finds herself invited to meet the wondrous wizard himself (Jeff Goldblum as Jeff Goldblum).

Everything is not as rosy as it seems. The animals of Oz have been made scapegoats, silenced and caged – no prizes for guessing who. It’s a similar plot to the most recent one Zootropolis but with a little less impact. Peter Dinklage gives a nice turn as goat historian Dr. Dillamond, but not enough attention is paid to actively making the audience care about the fate of any other talking animal.

More time is given to the film’s many musical numbers. It’s in these sequences that Wicked truly comes to life. Chu has exquisite musical direction, having delivered the criminally underrated album of 2021 In the heightsand nails the same exuberance here. It’s exhilarating and meticulously executed stuff. Yet there are problems here too, not least in the film’s heightened sense of self-importance. This is not only felt in the extended length, but also in WickedThe dour, harshly maudlin approach to coloring, lighting and color grading, the desaturation of which proves ill-suited to its vibrant choreography and costumes.

Only occasionally can Galinda’s pinks and Elphaba’s greens really pop, and only when they are able to overcome Chu’s unsightly interest in backlighting. The conclusion of Grande’s “Popular” routine sees the star bathed in a rush of fabulous pink. It’s a rare hint of what the camp might have been like.

Indeed, it lacks an engagement with the fantastical side of Oz. The technicolor wonder that made Judy Garland’s eyes widen. Even though a stream of superfluous suffixes is dropped at the end of the characters’ dialogue, it comes off a bit like a Mike Leigh-directed version of Dr. Seuss. From there, a more austere second half awaits us, for better or worse. With fewer opportunities to have fun in Part 2, it’s hard not to fear the drag ahead. However, only when the two are together can success be truly judged. A long wait for a dedicated fan, then. I’m just not sure I’m that guy.

T.S.