If you’re a big fan of the Broadway musical Wicked then this film adaptation might delight – but as a neophyte who went in story-blind and song-deaf, the Hollywood rendition failed to cast a spell over me.
It has already been a long and winding road from L Frank Baum’s classic 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to the beloved 1939 film and on to Gregory Maguire’s post-modern 1995 tale Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West which then inspired the musical, which now rivals The Lion King and Phantom of the Opera for theatre box office success.
Add the fact that this film is only the first of a two-part origin story, and at two and a half hours – roughly the same length as the whole stage production – and it would seem the screen Wicked demands a great degree of fanaticism.
The story begins with a ding and a dong as Munchkinland celebrates that the wicked witch is dead. That’s until Good Witch Glinda (the perfectly cast, multi-octave-trilling, pop star Ariana Grande) queries, somewhat sympathetically, “Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” In the plus column, the musical’s libretto has plenty more lines like this.
Cue a story told in one long flashback starting with the traumatic birth and rejection-seeped childhood of a strange, green-skinned girl named Elphaba Thropp.
The serious-minded outcast Elphaba (played as an adult by British Broadway star Cynthia Erivo) heads off to university with her paraplegic sister, is paired with a pink princess (Grande) for a roommate and learns a thing or two about friendships and fakery. She also demonstrates an aptitude for sorcery, which endears her to headmistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), before uncovering a sinister plot to rid the faculty of its animal teaching staff.
There’s all this and much, much more in the long-winded and rambling tale that ultimately has to get the right-thinking, honest Elphaba to the Emerald City in order to meet the Wizard and, somehow, turn bad.
Movie musicals really need to either boast tunes that are beloved already (Les Mis, West Side Story), or are catchy enough to enchant on a first listen (Wonker). Wicked’s songs are mostly melodically unmemorable and lyrically irrelevant, but at least a cleverly choreographed number starring Bridgerton’s dashing Jonathan Bailey delivers on the eyeballs front. Granted, Erivo and Grande sing superbly, and Grande’s performance is enjoyably hilarious as the well-meaning, ditsy Glinda.
But none of it engages enough to really matter.
Hooray for the pretty, gender-fluid costuming, Glinda’s bitchy best friends, and Jeff Goldblum’s effortless turn as the narcissistic Wizard.
But boo for this arduous journey up the yellow brick road, which even at its halfway point is too long, lightweight and lacking.
Rating out of five: ★★½
Wicked, directed by John M Chu, is in cinemas now.
