After enduring the stinky dumpster fire "musical" Emilia Pérez for this year's Oscars Death March, it's now time for the actual musical up for 10 Academy Awards - Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, Costume Design, Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Production Design, Sound, and Visual Effects - the long-anticipated adaptation of the first act of the 2003 Broadway hit Wicked, the prequel to The Wizard of Oz and revised origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West. The highest-grossing nominated movie nominated for Best Picture, just edging out Dune: Part Two, it's one of the token popular movies included to lure viewers into watching the telecast to see what movie the Normies haven't even heard of win.
We open a shot of the Witch's hat in a puddle of water while word spreads that some child from Kansas had killed her. News of her demise travels to Munchkinland and there is great celebration including a visit from Glinda (Ariana Grande, nominated for Supporting Actress). As she's about to float away in her bubble, a Munchkin asks if it's true Glinda knew the Wicked Witch? After a pause, she admits that she had crossed paths with her in school.
We flashback to see Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman) of Munchkinland, who loves his wife (Courtney-Mae Briggs) but as soon as he leaves for business, she welcomes in a stranger for hanky panky. (I haven't see the play, but I suspect by the way they never show her gentleman caller's face that he's the Wizard.) Nine months later she gives birth to a bouncing baby girl whose skin is green. The Governor is horrified and orders her taken away and the CGI bear who is the family nanny does so, but raises Elphaba (Karis Musongole as a child; Best Actress nominee Cynthia Erivo as an adult).
Later, the couple have another daughter, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who is in a wheelchair due to her premature birth. Because racism, Elphaba is bullied and when angered manifests powers like being able to levitate rocks and fling them. But her powers aren't controlled.
Years later, Governor Thropp takes Nessarose to attend Shiz University, which I gather is like Hogwarts without the pale English kids. When Elphaba accidentally unleashes her powers the courtyard, she is spotted by Shiz's Dean of Sorcery, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who offers to enroll Elphaba and privately tutor her in sorcery.
Also arriving is conceited brat pretty girl Galinda (Glinda's original name) with a massive wardrobe that runs hard into the pink spectrum. When she tries to kiss up to Morrible, it's interpreted as volunteering to share her private suite with Elphaba and she gets an unwanted roomie and the beginnings of a frenemyship begins. Adding to the tensions is the arrival of a conceited prince, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey, Bridgerton), who I found hard to read as to his intentions because I saw Frozen and know princes can be villains.
Running parallel is a subplot about animal persecution & bigotry as the last animal professor, the goat Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), is first victimized with hateful comments on his blackboards then dismissed, with his replacement unveiling the Wizard's new invention, a cage which will hold animals and prevent their learning to speak. This outrages Elphaba and causes another display of her powers, earning her an invitation to go to the Emerald City and meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, Death Wish) where she finds out what Dorothy will encounter was much more sinister in his younger days.
I'm a fan of musicals and I knew that it was considered shocking for the Broadway Wicked to lose Best Score, Book, and Musical to the bonkers Sesame Street-on-crack Avenue Q at the Tony Awards, but after watching Wicked: Part 1 I think that was the correct result. Read any of my musical reviews (click the hashtag up top) and I continually assert that musicals live or die on the quality of their songs and Avenue Q is wall-to-wall bangers (e.g. "The Internet Is For Porn", "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist", "It Sucks To Be Me", "My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada") while, beyond the instant earworm & act-closing "Defying Gravity" and "Popular", the only other song that grabbed me was Fireyo's introductory "Dancing Through Life." To be fair, I've only heard the score once and I've downloaded the original cast album to give it another spin; this is my first impression.
More problematic is the excessive length of the movie which clocks in at 2h 32m without credits and, as the Part 1 indicates, only covers the first act of the show which minus intermission is 2h 30m long. The desire to wring twice as many ticket sales out of fans has led to a situation where what was 90 minutes on stage is padded by an hour and it makes it a slog to get through. The excuse that people can't sit through a three-hour movie is rebutted by the fact that the top four highest grossing movies are Avatar (162 mins theatrically), Avengers: Endgame (181 mins), Avatar: The Way of Water (192 mins), and Titanic (195 mins) and this year's The Brutalist is 202 mins. They just wanted to milk it.
Director Jon M. Chu is familiar with musicals and dance movies, beginning his career with Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D and, after his big breakthrough hit Crazy Rich Asians, directed the film of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In The Heights and while he stages some huge musical set pieces on expansive practical sets (enhanced and extended with CGI), they all feel kinda bland and flat.
Part of that is due to Wicked's controversial cinematography and color grading which I've seen at least two YouTube videos analyzing what's going on with it and why it looks washed out and blah compared to The Wizard of Oz's contrasty Technicolor imagery. They put in ridiculous amounts of work (the carpenters list in the credits is like VFX artist lists these days) to construct these elaborate sets - they planted 9 MILLION tulips for the opening shot of Munchkinland and extended those with CGI for only a few shots which most will think is all CGI - and detailed costumes only to make it look hazy.
Part of my ambivalence toward this movie stemmed from Erivo's hissy fit over a fan edit of the film's poster to resemble the Broadway show's key art which covered Elphaba's eyes. Erivo posted a statement to social media crying victim & feeling denied blah-blah-woof-woof, why don't you just call everyone RAAAAAAAAAACIST, Toots. She walked it back a bit after someone from the studio probably told her to get the [heck] over herself before she torpedoes the hundreds of millions of dollars investment the way Rachel Zegler has wrecked Disney's live-action Snow White cash grab. Erivo just comes off as mean in the media with a chip on her shoulder.
So it was a surprise and relief that she is quite appealing as Elphaba and has quite of set of pipes on her; the girl can SANG. It makes the abuse she's subjected to by the United Colors of Bigotry denizens of Oz even more annoying and serves as a reminder that Chronicle made clear: Bullying people with superpowers results in very bad things happening.
The bigger surprise is Grande who was a teen starlet on Nickelodeon's Victorious beginning when she was 16 before branching off to music pop stardom. She's basically making her feature film debut here and she kills it, making Galinda into the Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon's role in Election) if Hogwarts. She's vain, entitled, and everything her "Good Witch of the East" title covers up. It's not a one-note mean girl take on the character as she eventually begins to accept Elphaba. The most effective acting between the two is during a silent dance off during a school party which changes the dynamics between them and their classmates.
Yeoh and Goldblum are their usual selves, but SNL's Bowen Yang, as a gender-swapped Pfannee, is just doing his gay guy shtick from SNL and it's distracting.
While I didn't hate Wicked, I think it's badly flawed by its bloated length and washed-out visuals. I'm not holding my breath for the conclusion due in November, Wicked: For Good (bad title), but if you're a fan of the show and just gotta have it in your life, perhaps you'll be more entertained.
Score: 5/10. Catch on cable/streaming. (Coming to Peacock on March 21, 2025)
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