At last, Wicked is a movie musical that doesn't apologize for being a movie musical

If you're a fan of the musical Wicked, then the new Wicked movie will make you happy. It translates the smash hit Broadway show song for song and beat for beat, even keeping dorky little oddities like the way people in Oz pronounce words all funny (e.g. "confusing" becomes "confusifying"). If you're a fan of musicals in general, then the movie will make you happy. The cast steps up, it hits the right emotional notes, and the production is a sumptuous orgy of over-stimulation for the eyes and ears.

If you don't like musicals, I doubt you'll find much to enjoy here, because Wicked refuses to water itself down to appeal to you and your kind. This is musical theater with a capital M and a capital T and a rising trilling crescendo at the end for no reason other than because that's showbiz, baby. For decades now, when movie musicals have been big enough to get wide releases at all, they've employed annoying gimmicks I imagine are meant to placate those people too cool to enjoy a musical on its own terms, and I'm sick of it. I don't want to listen to Joaquin Phoenix rake his strained growl of a voice over the great American songbook in Joker: Folie à Deux, or hear performers who are actors first and singers second diminish the beautiful score of Les Misérables. Can't we just have a musical that loves being a musical, with all the earnest corniness that implies?

We do. It's called Wicked. Get into it.

Review: Wicked (Part 1)

Step one to making a good musical: cast people who can sing. This seems like a no-brainer but you'd be surprised how many movies mess it up. As long as I live, I will never get over director Tim Burton casting obvious non-singers Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in his 2007 adaptation of Sweeney Todd, deciding that what Stephen Sondheim's rich, twisty score needed was singers who sound like they're whispering into a tin can the whole time.

But Wicked director Jon M. Chu has directed musicals before, like 2021's In The Heights. He doesn't make these rookie mistakes. To play Elphaba, the woman who will become the Wicked Witch of the West (did I mention that this is a Wizard of Oz prequel? Eh, if you're here you already know), he's picked Oscar nominee and professional singer Cynthia Erivo, who gives the movie's premiere performance. She does a great job of finding her own way into the head of this looked-over, insecure person who wears her pride like a shield. And while Erivo is just as capable of hitting every glory note that Idina Menzel hit when back she originated the role on Broadway, she adds in her own licks, matching rather than imitating past performers.

As Elaphaba's rival-turned-best friend Ginda, pop star Ariana Grande plays it a bit safer, sometimes sounding like an echo of Cristin Chenoweth, who first played Glinda on the stage. Grande isn't as experienced an actor as Erivo, so I understand this choice, but she does give the less dynamic performance. She still delivers where it counts, namely in the pristine, soaring vocals. You could even argue that Grande's comparative lack of expressiveness is a good fit for Glinda, who starts the movie as a shallow mean girl before revealing hidden depths.

Wicked wouldn't work if it didn't get the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda right, and it does. All the best moments involve them being at odds, coming together, and finally parting ways in a climactic rendition of the biggest hit song from the musical, "Defying Gravity," which Erivo gives the first-class treatment it needs.

The rest of the cast gives great support. Michelle Yeoh is effectively understated as a professor at the university where Elphaba and Glinda are training to become sorceresses, Jeff Goldblum is in his element as the daffy Wizard of Oz, and Peter Dinklage is perfect as a wise old history professor who is also a talking goat. Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James get laughs in bit parts as members of Glinda's fan club. The movie is very well cast, which I credit to Chu. He's not here to be clever or put his own stamp on the material; he knows that the best thing for the movie is to tell the story everyone already loves, cast awesome people and let them do their thing.

The weaknesses of Wicked

Why do some people just not like musicals, full stop? I think it comes down to an unwillingness or inability to accept the central gambit: that characters express themselves through song. Why are they singing instead of talking? A musical theater fan knows that there's no real answer to that question; it's just the way musicals work. If you can't get past that, they may not be for you.

I am someone who likes musicals, but there are times when I see what the haters are talking about. In Wicked, the song that did me in was "Dancing Through Life," a group number where new student Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) sings about how fun it is to be a rich playboy who doesn't have any responsibilities. The lyrical content is pretty banal and the melody isn't catchy enough to make up for it. To compensate, the movie over-designs the set and over-choreographs the dancing so there's lots of business to look at, which just made me more aware of how much it wasn't working for me.*

So I cringed, which I think is what most musical-haters do whenever the orchestra starts to swell. Musical theater is often dinged for feeling too earnest, too bold, too bright and bubbly. The best musicals, including Wicked, have a dramatic counterweight to balance this out. Although Wicked has plenty of sparkle and shine, it also tackles some serious themes, including family abuse, bigotry, and the power of propaganda. But "Dancing Through Life" was all sugary sweetness and no sour bite.

The term "theater kid" is often used as a pejorative. It conjures up images of someone who's always putting on a show, who's eager to please to the point of being annoying, who uses jazz hands in ordinary conversation. Wicked has some of that energy. It goes big, sometimes too big. At two fours and 40 minutes, the movie is too long. There are a couple of bits that would lift right out, including an action chase scene towards the end that was added for the film, I imagine because Wicked is a big tentpole movie and big tentpole movies must needs have an action sequence.

Verdict

And as long as the movie is, it only reaches the halfway point of the original show; that's right, this is Wicked (Part 1). Part 2 will wrap up the story next November. I was initially pretty annoyed that we were only getting half the story, especially since that fact isn't advertised in any of the marketing. The stage show by itself is around two hours and 40 minutes long, I reasoned, so why can't they fit the whole thing into one movie? But after seeing the movie, I don't see how it could been shrunk down without losing its integrity. Even if you took out the bits I mentioned above, it would still be too long to tack on another half a musical.

And that's okay, because Wicked won me over, warts and all. If you're open to it, Wicked will speak to the theater kid in all of us. Even the excesses start to seem fun. For instance, there's a new musical number added just for the movie that is 100% an excuse to include a couple of crowd-pleasing cameos. It goes on way too long, but those cameos are crowd-pleasing, and it's hard to stay mad at a movie that wants this badly to make you happy.

Wicked opens this weekend in theaters everywhere.

Grade: A-

*I know Fiyero goes through some heavy stuff later in the story, but the song doesn't get points for being retrospectively ironic, especially since we won't see most of that stuff until Part 2.

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