Wicked: Part I
First screened in December 2024
Director: Jon M. Chu. Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater, Andy Nyman, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, Keala Settle, Karis Musongole, Courtney Mae-Briggs, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel, Alice Fearn, Adam James. Screenplay: Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox (based on the book of the stage musical by Winnie Holzman, based in turn on the novel by Gregory Maguire, extrapolated in turn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum).

 In Brief:  Plenty to nitpick, but the visual and emotional grandeur and the genre-specific cohesion are my biggest takeaways.

VOR: ②  Most exuberant and lovingly crafted pop musical since Hairspray? Not quite innovative; hews closely to a template that could well have gone wrong.


   
Photo © 2024 Universal Pictures
I got quite a few, "Why four stars? / Are you having a stroke?" replies when I first posted a four-star rating on Letterboxd for Wicked last December. To be honest, pretty much every criticism I read on that site and elsewhere holds water, and many people on all sides conceded that taste, expectation, and pre-existing sympathy for the material matter a lot to how Wicked will go down for anybody. It may be that liking the musical fine but not loving it (and having forgotten plenty of details), liking musicals in general but not being passionately attached, never really cleaving to The Wizard of Oz even as a child, and basically rooting for the gals to have a great time and pass one on to me was pretty close to ideal as a first-time viewer orientation. Bring it on! was my energy, and they did.

I can't say I'm shocked that my enthusiasm has dipped a bit on second viewing. To say the least, the movie benefited from a giant, speaker-supported screen with an eager crowd and profits less from a late-night Blu-ray spin, with the sound turned low out of respect to the nearby sleeper. For sure, some of the digital chintziness hit worse on a return trip. That flyover of the Nintendo-era quintet pixelating down the Yellow Brick Road remains a laughable and costly gaffe right up top, and the talking animals weren't slaying on TV. Every character beyond the main three is a lumpy scone. I join most of you in finding it very strange that the filmmakers decided to interrupt "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" with so many non-musical cutaways, given that those are not only the two most famous songs in Part 1 (or in the whole show) but also the two with the steadiest, most rousing builds when you let them play as written.

But what can I say? The build of the actual movie still kills, at least from my seat. I love a story where complicated female friendship intensifies and overcomes, not as a sprint or built-in assumption but as a marathon through an obstacle course. I also love a movie where a woman's anger builds till she absolutely bursts with it. Wicked manages to do both (no mean feat), and the commercially "forced" split of one show into two at least allows us to linger in the uncertainty of where exactly the Elphaba/Glinda alliance stands as we exit—and of where Fiyero's allegiances lie, though I'm glad that question is secondary at best, and in fact tertiary to "how did they tailor his clothes like that?" And I'm thinking of all his necklines, shoulders, and collars when I say that but also, it must be admitted, his britches.

Pink + Green + Yellow is not a color story with a deep place in my heart, but I love those little Hershey Kiss-shaped Easter mints with the tiny white dots on the bottom, so I'm not complaining about the aesthetic or the grading. In fact, I'll take it pretty quickly over the even chintzier, even more garish palettes of what happens on Pandora or in a lot of big, boyish blockbusters where shit goes boom. I like that the grounding note of Cynthia Erivo's performance is a pained, introspective stillness, not the let-her-rip belter bravado I'd anticipated, until it has to be that. I believe this queen is SAD, when it would be easier to play her as envious, imperious, and/or annoyed. We all take it for granted now, but I still love that Erivo was cast, and how that casting bolsters the movie's ideas and tensions without needing to spell shit out.

I like that Ariana Grande keeps putting all kinds of rhythmic spins and some vocal and physical zhuzh into a huge number of lines and pauses. She never stops record-scratching, and even so, I never feel like she's trying to steal the movie. In fact, she's remarkably attuned to her principal scene partner and a good, game-lifting sport with her supernumeraries. I like that nobody's trying to be Judy Garland, but the spirit of the 30s still abides in important ways, with a black-and-green Margaret Sullavan side-by-side with a Barbified, big-voiced Joan Blondell who knows how to milk her screen time for cream.

Still, not everything is a comedy, and I like that I've cried both times I watch Elphaba and Guh-linda's weird-ass dance and reciprocal soul-rescue in the secret club or whatever. They both act the pastel crap out of that scene, and the filmmakers have made all the necessary choices to allow for that to happen. It's like watching Jack and Rose do Romy and Michele's climactic dance just before the Titanic starts sinking, and in fact while some of the water is already seeping in.

I like that Jon M. Chu's direction, the shot plans, the staging, and the choreography all go big on massive group numbers, but I still leave the movie feeling like I've mostly been watching a duet between two people, like a Strawberry Shortcake Thelma & Louise. (Elphaba isn't telling everything about what happened in Texas, either, but Glinda basically knows and loves her harder for it, even if it's frustrating that your best friend comes with padlocked compartments.) And I love that all of this is styled very much for kids, without imagining that kids are unthinking, unfeeling, totally unsophisticated, or really only in it for the SnoCaps and the soda. I also think the movie makes a range of decisions to speak at once to the adults in the audience and the kids inside those adults. Clearly not all of them, but more than enough of them.

I could hold forth on more little details I savored, like the fabrics, silhouettes, and frisky details in the costume design, but I can also tell you I just had a big blast on this cheesy but totally engaging theme park ride. I had a lump in my throat and teeth-marks on my lips watching that hot-air balloon get away from the monkeys and minions, and then a second lump when I realized it actually hadn't. (As I mentioned, I'd mentally binned a lot of plot details.) I liked that the final 20 or 30 minutes got genuinely scary, from the agonized ape loudly sprouting wings on the floor to the big, window-busting chase down the dark hallway and up that dangerous tower. It was the closest thing I could remember to a Raiders of the Lost Ark or an Empire Strikes Back "for girls," even though Wicked never acts, from plot beats to action to background casting, like it's only for girls, or that media for girls isn't also for anyone and everyone. Who knows, I may have talked myself back into four stars. Grade: B+

(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)

Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture
Best Actress: Cynthia Erivo
Best Supporting Actress: Ariana Grande
★Best Production Design: Nathan Crowley, Lee Sandales
★Best Costume Design: Paul Tazewell
Best Film Editing: Myron Kerstein
Best Sound: Simon Hayes, Jack Dolman, John Marquis, Nancy Nugent Title, Andy Nelson
Best Original Score: John Powell, Stephen Schwartz
Best Visual Effects: Pablo Helman, David Shirk, Jonathan Fawkner, Paul Corbould
Best Makeup & Hairstyling: Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, Sarah Nuth

Golden Globe Nominations and Winners:
Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)
Best Actress (Musical/Comedy): Cynthia Erivo
Best Supporting Actress: Ariana Grande
★Cinematic and Box Office Achievement

Other Awards:
National Board of Review: Best Film; Best Director; NBR Spotlight Award (Erivo & Grande)
British Academy Awards (BAFTAs): Best Production Design; Best Costume Design
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