‘Wicked’ Review: Failure to Launch
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy recited while clicking her heels, but it seems Hollywood would much prefer to stay put in Oz. Ever since L Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was adapted into a 1939 live-action film – dropping the “wonderful”, adding some tunes, and becoming the most cherished movie musical of all time – we have witnessed a slew of sequels, reboots and world-building ventures. And then, in 1995, along came Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, a novel which filled in the backstories of Baum’s characters. In 2003, a musical adaptation landed on Broadway. And now we arrive at Wicked, a film adaptation of a stage adaptation of a revisionist text which, in every washed-out frame, creaks under the pressure from what has come before.
We begin just after Dorothy’s adventure ends, with news that the Wicked Witch of the West has been defeated. Glinda the Good (played by pop star Ariana Grande) is indulging in celebrations with the townsfolk, though she appears a little distant. There is a rumour whispered in Oz that Glinda used to be friends with the witch.
They first met, we learn, many years ago at Shiz University when the witch was known simply as Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a student with extraordinary magical powers. She also happens to be green, which has made her an outcast her entire life and continues to do so in the halls of higher education. Glinda meanwhile is pretty and perky and pink. Everyone loves her about as much as they hate Elphaba. But the latter has a trump card: she has signed up for private classes with the school’s notoriously hard-to-please sorcery teacher Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Glinda shows no such potential in that department, which puts her on a back foot not even her highest heel can overcome. As the character most aware of the power she wields and lacks, Glinda is the most interesting by far: there is a desperation to the role, and Grande nails the comedic notes in the first act and a few of the more sinister ones in the second half.
Also in attendance are Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), a love interest for both Glinda and Elphaba; Pfannee (Bowen Yang), a bitchy and blessedly funny sidekick for Glinda; Boq (Ethan Slater), a munchkin who dates Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode). If you can overlook that none of these actors look like students, it is harder to ignore that none of the cast appear to be acting in the same film, especially the two leads. Both Grande and Erivo are accomplished performers, but the former is too poised and the latter entirely too earnest for their roles to mesh.
Director Jon M Chu, who brought an immigration story to life in In the Heights and enriched the superior rom-com Crazy Rich Asians with real humour, clearly reveres the source material and some of the stagier elements are successful, like Elphaba and Glinda’s bonding moment in the OzDust Ballroom, where the camera waves between the crowds and bring to life the claustrophobic and changeable nature of a student body. Or the disillusioning moment when Glinda and Elphaba reach the Emerald City, and the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, playing a conman with aplomb) walks them through his plans for Oz’s authoritarian future on a three-dimensional map. Stephen Schwartz’s songs – especially “No One Mourns the Wicked” and “Popular” – look and sound right.
But there isn’t much to make you want to stick around. The sets are impressive but unappealing, the colours muted and lighting subdued. There is such a reliance on lens flare that you soon wish climate-controlling Madame Morrible had interceded. You never once have a sense of place in any of these worlds, not in the spinning halls of Shiz or the balconies of the Emerald City, which leaves you feeling like you’re stranded on a movie set: the lights are on, but nobody’s home. The filmmakers dutifully adhere the weirdness of the story – Peter Dinklage voices a history-teaching goat (not the ridiculous part) who encourages his students to lead a resistance (wait for it…) against anti-animal measures in Oz (ah, there we go!) – though refuse to take us anywhere new.
Which would be fine if this were the full story. Instead, a three-hour musical has been adapted into two films, the first of which comes in two hours and 41 minutes: a decision that defies brevity and drains this story of any drama. This is not a complicated origins story – it is, in fact, about as uncomplicated as an origin story can be – but this version does not deepen our understanding of Oz, or its inhabitants, or its enigmatic witches. As the film reaches its conclusion, the tempo finally picks up, the two leads begin to harmonise, and there’s a hint of tension. But it is too little, and at least six show tunes too late. For a film about illusion and reality, and the disenchantment that lies between those two points, it’s perhaps fitting how many flat notes Wicked hits.
‘Wicked’ is out in cinemas 22 November
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