Wicked: One Brick (and a One Half) Short of a Road, But Still a Road Paved in Gold
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A-minus
Unless you’ve been hiding under a tornado-tossed Kansas farmhouse, you’ve heard of Wicked, the Broadway musical phenomenon based on Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch. Sprouting from the belief that there are two sides to every story, Maguire sets out to give the real skinny on what went down in Oz between the Wizard, the Good Witch of the East, and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Maguire’s revisionist storytelling has gone from book to Broadway and now has arrived on the big screen in two acts. Wicked, a.k.a. Wicked: Part One opens this week, with Part Two opening a year from now.
Cynthia Eriva and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda in Wicked: Part One
For director Jon M. Chu, the task of reimagining the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the East as friends and roommates before everything goes south has already been charted out for him in every direction but north. The larger task facing Chu is recreating the magic that made the Broadway play such a phenomenon.
To do anything less would risk disappointing the multitude of Wickies (ardent fans of the musical) who, had he failed, might then turn on Chu like a horde of flying monkeys.
This might account for Chu’s decision to nearly double the running time required of the live production. Wicked: Part One’s 2 hour and 40-minute running time is a mere 5 minutes shorter than the entire two-act musical. But Chu is on familiar ground, having adapted the musical In the Heights from stage to screen and is attached to direct an upcoming adaptation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Wicked is the unofficial backstory of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and her bubbly, flirtatious, and passively aggressive roommate, Glinda (Ariana Grande).
It’s been well over a century since L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a story that settles the score between good and evil and set a standard for witches everywhere. But after decades of being maligned as the enemy of munchkins, scarecrows, tin men, and lions, it’s time for Elphaba to have her say.
Except Elphaba isn’t talking because guess what? Ding-Dong, The Wicked Witch is Dead. And so, the task of telling the story falls to Glinda, the Good Witch of the East. After all, as much as Wicked is Elphaba’s origin story, a story that upends all we think we know about Oz before Dorothy came crashing down in Munchkinland, it’s also Glinda’s story.
We know from the original 1939 movie that the Wizard—then played by Frank Morgan—is a bit of a con-artist. He’s not above scamming the residents of Emerald City into feeding into his unchallenged God complex. In Baum’s story the Wizard is, in the end, harmless, but a fraud nonetheless.
In Wicked, Jeff Goldblum takes over as the Wizard, maintaining the same jittery, self-consciousness that Morgan brought to his Wizard. But it’s Goldblum’s distinct speech pattern and flamboyant manner that sets him apart. Goldblum is but a blip on the screen in this first half, with perhaps more to do in Wicked: Part Two due in November 2025.
Michelle Yeoh stars as Madame Morrible, the elegant overseer of the school in which both Elphaba and Glinda attend. Yeoh delivers a typically fine performance, but she seems a curious choice for a movie of this sort given the limited range of her vocals.
Meanwhile, Erivo’s Elphaba is demure, kind, and gifted. But in the eyes of others, including her own father, Elphaba is hideous because of her lizard-green skin. Playing to Elphaba’s strength and her weaknesses, Erivo depicts a woman resigned to her lot in life as the only ‘green-skinned’ witch to set foot in Oz, and yet remains defiant in her efforts to defend her own interests and protect her sister, (Marissa Bode). And though Elphaba’s skills surpass everyone else, she is not one to showboat unlike her peppy roommate, Glinda.
Grande shines in her first major film role as Glinda, The Good Witch of the East. Grande’s Glinda is coquettish, whimsically self-centered, and inadvertently shallow; qualities that might sink any other character but are uplifted by Grande’s easy charm and playfulness.
There are a few bumps along this yellow brick road, including a catty and needlessly hammy duo who trail Glinda like lost puppies, and a strange choice to showcase one of Elphaba’s signature songs running through a mountaintop as though she were Shrek in a parody of The Sound of Music.
The film opens with a rather underwhelming number in which residents of Oz celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch. Wicked can at times feel like a movie that’s one brick short of a road. But when all is said and sung, it’s still a road paved in gold.
Wicked: Part One is directed by Jon M. Chu and stars Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum. Wicked: Part One opens wide in cinemas, Friday, October 22.