"Wicked"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

It's possible that your response to Wicked will depend on your knowledge and appreciation of the theatrical juggernaut on which it's based, a musical that transcends even the meaning of that word — Wicked is less a musical than a commercial and pop-culture phenomenon. A lot of massive musical sensations have been adapted into films in recent yers, including Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Dear Evan Hansen, Rent and, yes, Cats. Largely, they have not been good.

Wicked is good. Wicked is very, very good.

That's the best possible news, given that it has taken more than two decades for Universal Pictures, which produced the show on stage, to get it to the screen. On one hand, it's easy to look at the stage show and think, "What could go wrong?" Then again, look at those other movies. They've all been varying degrees of pretty bad, even the Oscar-nominated Les Miserables, which was, despite all the hype, not good.

So, to quote a song from Wicked itself: Thank goodness. Director John M. Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman (who wrote the sometimes-maligned book of the stage show) and Dana Fox have taken the show more or less intact but managed to expand on it, deepen it, enhance it. This is a deep fantasy, a movie that depends at the bare minimum on having familiarity with The Wizard of Oz, and ideally with knowing something about Wicked itself.

The show was based on a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire that sought to re-evaluate the character of the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's novel and the 1939 MGM musical. It's an early example of deep deconstruction of existing pop culture, something that seems to happen on a daily basis today, as movies and TV shows are endlessly taken apart, re-examined, and put back together. But Wicked seemed new as a novel, and newer still as a musical, though it doesn't seem nearly as new as a movie.

Those who know the mythology best are likely to fall madly in love with Wicked. The filmmaking team has satisfied that audience entirely, as evidenced by the ecstatic response of the woman wearing a witch's hat in our audience. But that familiarity could also work against it, so the filmmakers have done two important things: They've created an eye-popping spectacle that incorporates a lot of CGI but also feels impressively physical and real; and they've made two extraordinary casting decisions.

As perky, popular Galinda (soon to be "Glinda") Upland, Ariana Grande-Butera is a dazzling, charming revelation who captures the bubble-headed airiness of the role but finds, astonishingly, a way to make it her own. Since I'm of a certain age, I was unfamiliar with Grande-Butera as a singer or performer, and came away from this film a pink-dyed-in-the-wool fan: She's a mesmerizing screen presence.

I was more familiar with Cynthia Erivo, though as a dramatic performer from her Oscar-nominated performance in Harriet. She's got the dramatic chops — and the role of Elphaba Thropp, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West, demands them. It's her story, after all, and Wicked makes a pretty compelling case that what happened in Oz wasn't really related to Dorothy Gale of Kansas, in any case.

Rather, it's Elphaba Thropp, born with skin of a different color that branded her as an outsider, a young woman with a hard-won and well-developed sense of justice and morality who also has a deep longing to live up to her own sense of potential. Elphaba has one of the best showstopper numbers in Broadway history with "Defying Gravity," but an earlier number called "The Wizard and I" is the distillation of every "I want" song in Broadway history. In just a few minutes, through her powerful singing voice and her fine sense of drama, Erivo helps us understand everything that moves Elphaba throughout the movie.

That proves to be crucial, because the final 30 minutes or so of Wicked is a little muddled — a problem the musical also had. It's strange how completely the film has failed to fix the problems of the musical, which begins to flag around the time Elphaba and Galinda, who are the very definition of "frenemies," get to the Emerald City to see the Wizard of Oz. Questions of who wants what and why become more urgent even as the answers get a little murkier, and Wicked delves a little uncomfortably into issues of politics and power.

This film of Wicked ends exactly where the stage musical deposits audiences into intermission, except instead of 15 minutes we'll have a year to wait. Erivo, Grande-Butera and "Defying Gravity" make it a satisfying place to stop — Chu has turned the number into a grand, emotionally fulfilling spectacle, ending Wicked at a literal high point.

What happens next will be interesting to see. Act 2 of Wicked has never been as fulfilling. It lacks some dramatic thrust and musical chops, and its ideologies have often seemed a little weak and unconvincing on stage. Whether the second part of Wicked the film can fix those flaws is something we won't know for a year. All we know now is that we have Part 1 of Wicked ... and as a whole it's quite wonderful to behold.

Viewed November 24, 2024 — AMC Topanga

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