Review: Wicked: For Good

Director:  Jon M. Chu

Stars:  Cynthia Erivo, Marissa Bode, Ariana Grande

I live in a small city in the UK. The local multiplex here is applicably modest. ‘Only’ seven screens. And still, at a certain cinema chain, Wicked: For Good is programmed 23 times a day. Down the road in the next major town, it’s programmed 36 times a day. That’s a new screening every 15 minutes or so.

Now, this isn’t a new business model. When the MCU was at its peak this was de rigeur. See also the release of any Bond movie, or half-term guff like The Super Mario Bros. Movie. But it’s been a little while since anything so clearly showed the annihilation of choice that occurs when a studio releases a picture built for the sole purpose of box-office supremacy. Even the first half of this unnecessarily overstretched project didn’t demand so much real estate. There’s nothing else to see.

I can’t even blame the cinemas for conceding to this model. Times are tough for chains and independents alike, with unprecedented competition from the growing array of home streaming services and ever-narrowing exclusivity windows. Everyone’s being squeezed. But I feel especially bad for the smaller releases that can’t find a screen to glean back their outgoings, because all that’s playing anywhere is Wicked: For Good, Wicked: For Good, Wicked: For Good.

I tried not to take this sense of umbridge into the screening that I attended, but watching Jon M. Chu’s ugly, bloated bore did little to assuage the feeling that I was capitulating to this cycle (I did use a comp ticket for this one, which helped a little). The first half of Wicked – longer than it’s conclusion by a good 20 minutes – keenly felt this sense of stodge. But it was buoyed – nay saved – by the gleaming chemistry between Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Crucially, their stories are far more intertwined in Wicked‘s first half. But since “Defying Gravity” the musical throws them in different directions, and that on-screen simpatico is sorely missed for much of the remaining running time.

There’s nothing in the way of a recap for non-fans or those of us who have watched 500+ other movies in the intervening 12 months, so those who are foggy ought to refresh themselves. We return to Oz to find Elphaba (Erivo) outcast and dubbed ‘the Wicked Witch of the West’ by Madame Morrible’s (Michelle Yeoh) relentless propaganda machine. Chu presents this in a fashion that deliberately kindles to mind the slandering of the Jews in Nazi Germany. As if his point weren’t made clearly enough, he even has the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) visually reference/plagiarise Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator.

Indeed, Wicked: For Good skirts with some unexpectedly barbed political commentary, opening with twin ‘speeches’. The actually-liberal outcast, Elphaba, can’t get anyone to pay attention to her pleas regarding the plight that’s happening all around them, while the spokesperson for the totalitarian regime, Glinda (Grande), is an empty shirt who has nothing to say whatsoever. Where Elphaba has words that aren’t given credence, Glinda is literally just “lalala”s. Too bad Chu and his writers overcook their efforts with some lumpen nonsense about munchkins requiring travel permits.

The first half of the second half sets itself into a plodding but serviceable pace, but Chu seems a little unsure how to stage his smattering of musical numbers in order to raise the roof, so W:FG gets too comfy in this trundling soap opera groove. We flit from place to place, scene to scene, and endure indulgent asides and added material, like childhood flashbacks. It’s all quite pedestrian.

Grande’s biggest gift to the first half of this folly was the reveal of her savvy comic timing, but since losing Elphaba and becoming a stooge of the regime, Glinda’s reduced to a lot of glum one-note pouting, and the fire that once dazzled is duly dulled. This leaves it up to Erivo to carry the heavy-lifting, which she does. W:FG is always better when she’s on screen, but as it goes on and The Wizard of Oz starts muscling for screen time, those opportunities grow fewer and further between.

Consensus seems to be that the second half of the stage version is pitted with problems and so it goes here, mainly surrounding the infamous source material that inspired all of this. All of the film’s attempts to fold in the narrative of The Wizard of Oz are spectacularly cack-handed, until it feels as though you’ve been left watching some dismal deleted scenes reel. The fate of Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero is particularly fumbled, left to inference and a dependence on knowledge of the more famous text. Granted, that’s something of a given for most viewers, but the way his character’s transformation is scrubbed from the narrative is clumsy and conspicuous. It all feels deeply weird, and not in the way that a once-camp now deathly dry musical should.

It seems painfully obvious, now, that the majority of the bangers are stacked in the story’s first half. I see why they decided to bolt “For Good” on as the subtitle for this volume. It’s a nudge in the ribs to the uninitiated that now, at last, they’re about to belt out a good one. W:FG has been fleshed out with some new songs along with the other added material, but they all fall by the wayside when Grande and Erivo come together for their show-stopper.

And it’s not just the song but the presence of the two stars sharing the same space, and a reminder that this factor is all too rare in the back half of the story. Precious little makes up for it. Chu’s CG world is syrupy and lacks for any ‘wow’ factor. Indeed, Oz itself registers rather amorphously, as though the creatives are largely disinterested in it. Wicked: For Good may help instill a healthy distrust for power in the young minds who are sat down in front of it. But – if the screening I attended was anything to go by – it won’t hold their attention long enough to impart much that’s meaningful. The adults may have been taken away for some murky nostalgia; most of their kids were on their phones.

But… does it matter? Does it matter when a movie’s purpose is so plainly just to rake in money? When the roll-out evidences that the quality of the finished product is simply immaterial?

Wicked: For Good is the only movie anyone will be talking about right now. But not because it’s good or bad, nor for its qualities or deficiencies. It’s because it’s the only choice available. And that’s a change for the worse.