USA, — Over the last two decades, “Wicked” has hopped on its proverbial broomstick and soared. With 8,000-plus performances under its belt, the Broadway show has made $1.7 billion to become the second-highest-grossing musical of all time – behind only “The Lion King” – while reminding spectators about the capacity for goodness that lies beneath us despite whatever misbegotten assumptions our exteriors might spur.
What, then, lies beneath the candy-colorful, glamorous, glittery, reportedly $145 million exterior of “Wicked: Part 1,” half of director Jon M. Chu’s cinematic retelling of the backstory of Hollywood’s most famous witch? As it turns out, when stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande aren’t twirling across the screen like a Kansas tornado while belting out the musical’s iconic numbers… not very much. At least not nearly enough that might be suggested in the attention paid by craftspeople to the film’s costuming, hair styling, and large-scale interpretations of Shiz University and Emerald City—all components sure to satisfy some “Wicked” fans who buy an opening-weekend ticket and never want this bloated, shoddily paced experience to end.
No, perhaps Chu's movie doesn’t quite have to defy gravity to conjure up box office magic so much as remain upright while floating along on the template that’s been created for it—not just the visual inspirations of the play it’s adapting, but the colorful buoyancy, environmental creativity and tonal juggling popularized by similarly cozy IP adaptations like the live-action “Beauty and the Beast” and last year’s “Wonka.” Yet no measure of its eccentric-looking adornments, and no amount of Ariana Grande in an immeasurably enjoyable performance, can fully compensate for the lack of worldly eccentricity or emotional depth needed to set the stage for Elphaba’s transformation from promising, magically adept pupil to object of fear-mongering control.
What the movie does conjure up is a strong suggestion about the things we accept in live theater and the things we accept in movies: Namely, that there may be a starker delineation between the two than we think, despite both being visual mediums enlivened by spectacle and bolstered by the charisma of recognizable stars. “Wicked: Part 1” has both, to be sure, the first indication arriving in a bubble as Grande’s Glinda glides to a scene of celebration in Munchkinland, which has just received news of the Wicked Witch of the West’s demise at the hands of a plucky farmgirl.
Grande, weaponizing a light chuckle and creating in us a suspicion that she’s not as forthcoming as she is benevolent, easily transmutes her pop-star effervescence into celebrity status of a different sort. By the time she starts recounting how the green-skinned Elphaba wasn’t always the omen of wickedness she’s been portrayed as – beginning with an awkwardly edited sequence depicting how she's been chastised since birth, narrative signposts that will be repeated mere minutes later – it becomes apparent how much more work Chu and his screenwriters (Dana Fox and Winnie Holzman) will have to do to enrich this world to match the consequential rivalry-turned-friendship to come if moviegoers don’t have the same benefit as theatergoers of being in the actors’ physical presence.
Thank goodness for two starring performers, then, who at least react to the world around them in such a way that you can believe they’ve lived in it all their lives, even as this fantasy world isn't nearly as engrossing as Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth, the Wizarding World of "Harry Potter" or, for that matter, the Oz of 1939.
For the uninitiated, the story of this “Wizard of Oz” prequel kicks into gear as Glinda arrives at Shiz University (think Hogwarts shrunk to summer resort size). A creature of naive privilege whose disappointments are more evident in her eyes than her ever-present smile – it doesn’t slip even when given the cold shoulder by the esteemed Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) – Glinda has lessons to learn and lessons to impart on Elphaba, for whom a lifetime of ostracization by everyone but her wheelbound sister has erected internal defense mechanisms. No, she isn’t seasick, she makes sure to tell everyone she comes across.
But the individualistic Elphaba will turn green in a different way when she’s assigned to room with Glinda, their personalities grinding against each other until solidarity eventually blooms, laying the foundation for a carousel of easily digestible lessons about the way we treat others and recognizing not everything is owed to us just because of our status. Erivo’s considered performance makes it easy to spot the humility under her own assumptions. The pivotal scene showing the wall between Elphaba and Glinda starting to crumble works because of how the actors fully lock into each other; Grande sells her shift from performative goodness to genuine empathy as Erivo’s eyes twinkle with long-sought-after recognition amid the many others who mock her at first sight.
It’s all well-meaning and mostly sincere, timeless lessons for a timeless setting. Which makes it aggravating that “Wicked” is also a tad too obsessed with zapping as many contemporary moviegoing pleasure centers as it can; it’s uncomfortably quick, for instance, to move from the forced removal of Shiz’s talking animal professors to wondering whether resident university charmer Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) has eyes for Elphaba despite being with Glinda. This jostling between the serious and the silly makes it hard to find nuance. To be fair, nuance isn’t what most people are seeking out of “Wicked,” yet the feeling persists of an emptiness or dramatic dimness in the story when cast members aren't swaying in sync and feelings aren't borne out in song.
Which isn’t to say Chu was a faulty director for the material; the 45-year-old filmmaker, after all, has developed an affinity for injecting even his non-genre movies with a formal passion worthy of his characters’ heroic journeys. His prior efforts, which include “Crazy Rich Asians” and “In the Heights,” are kinetic and ultimately made uplifting through that dynamism; energy is carried from scene to scene in those movies, making narrative destinations all the more satisfying.
With “Wicked,” however, the director finds himself overwhelmed by the bigger canvas. He can pull off a number like the dazzling showstopper “What Is this Feeling?,” which sees Glinda and Elphaba putting their foot down as playful choreography personifies the two roommates’ budding loathing for each other. Then the orchestra’s swell diminishes and we’re left with questions: How much time has passed? How much do their peers care? Why are scenes still brightly (and garishly) lit from every possible angle even as the temperament of our protagonists has changed? It’s hard to get a sense of the world beyond Glinda and Elphaba, and presumably a film adaptation that tells one half of their story would have accomplished that before the third act whisks them to Emerald City, where visual busyness tries to distract from the fact that it isn’t all that awe-inspiring of a fantastical metropolis.
The movie eventually, in its final gasps, manages to bewitch itself into halfway aligning personal conflicts with bigger ones whose consequences should come to bear in Part 2, due out in a year. But it requires us to stretch our imagination in a way I presume the movie’s makers didn’t intend, to compromise scenes jolting the whole adventure alive with urgency against two-plus hours of comparatively drowsy and derivative build-up. Amusingly enough, Chu ends up defying himself by ending with “Wicked’s” most propulsive and thematically coherent stretch as Erivo hits the musical’s most iconic high note in a the-world-will-never-be-the-same-moment that rises to the occasion. Could we, while watching Elphaba achieve total self-actualization, finally be witnessing Chu doing the same?
"Wicked: Part 1" is now in theaters. It's rated PG. Runtime: 2 hours, 40 minutes.
Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Marissa Bode
Directed by Jon M. Chu; written by Dana Fox and Winnie Holzman
2024
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