The entire film is nothing short of a masterclass in musical cinema, anchored on pitch perfect performances by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande who are both magnetically divine.
* This review contains spoilers. *
Let’s cut to the chase the same way the movie does in its first few moments: Wicked: For Good is just better in every way than Wicked. Unburdened with exposition and world building, the new film, shot back-to-back with the first, is tighter, sharper, and fat-free. It also packs a stronger emotional punch.
This is also to say that this adaptation of the second half of the Broadway musical improves massively on the original stage production, which is generally described as inferior to Act 1, largely for lacking a showstopping number like the soaring Defying Gravity. There’s also a lot less levity, playfulness, and cheeky, campy humor. In short, it’s no Popular.
But it’s precisely because of this “deficiency” that the movie works sensationally. Musical theater typically engages, thrills, and overwhelms through bombast, spectacle, and razzle dazzle. Wicked: For Good goes for one of the things cinema does best: turn inward and cut to the heart of the matter to move audiences with intimacy.
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The pains, aches, and wounds afflicting the characters are now laid bare. Elphaba may be airborne most of the time but she’s burdened with the weight of black propaganda against her character, now labeled as the frightening, murderous Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda, on the other hand, is even more of a princess than ever, enjoying the people’s adoration and adulation as Glinda The Good, a manufactured public persona, who is internally conflicted because she remains loyal as a very good friend to public enemy #1 Elphaba.
Fiyero is similarly weighed down by opposing public expectations and personal desires. Nessa, Elphaba’s estranged sister, and Boq, the friend she has amorous feelings for, form the film’s quintet of searching, bruised characters valiantly holding on to hope while teetering on the edge.
The two new songs written specifically for the movie aren’t just perfunctory “for the sake of” additions. No Place Like Home, featuring a nod to the line “There’s no place like home” spoken by Dorothy in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, sees Elphaba rallying the animals of Oz not to leave the land and finding the resolve to fight the Wizard for banishing them and her. The Girl in the Bubble is even better. It captures Glinda at the pivotal moment where she examines herself and makes the decision to pop the bubble of pretense and make believe she has allowed herself to be pushed into and be an honest-to-goodness Glinda The Good.
Director John Chu films these musical sequences as well as the centerpiece duet For Good with such bracing simplicity, honesty, and directness—no production tricks, gimmicks, bells and whistles—that pierces through to the soul. Not that Chu has abandoned the grand. Watch out for No Good Deed in which Elphaba, surrounded by the now supportive flying monkeys that used to hunt for her, decides she might as well make good on her reputation for being wicked. It’s as big a showstopper as they come and it just might get you goosified.
The entire film is nothing short of a masterclass in musical cinema, anchored on pitch perfect performances by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande who are both magnetically divine. They deserve to get their second consecutive Oscar acting nominations — for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively — at the very least. It would be a truly wicked crime if they didn’t. Ditto the other nods the film got last year.
The film also cleverly, imaginatively incorporates Dorothy and her ruby slippers, the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Yellow Brick Road into the narrative, making it sort of a complete telling of the tale of the Wizard of Oz.
If it still wasn’t perfectly clear in the first film that Wicked is a sociopolitically charged piece about power, propaganda, prejudice, social injustice, racism, and authoritarianism, Wicked: For Good fearlessly, creatively, and brilliantly spells it out. Audiences should be changed for the better.
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