WICKED Movie Review | Cynthia Erivo | Ariana Grande | Jonathan Bailey

Really surprisingly emotional like it made me tear up. I was shocked. I'm like, what the hell? Why am I crying? Popular we know about popular and we have thoughts on wicked this is the musical extravaganza of the stage show the juggernaut stage show based on a book that Apparently a lot of you guys have read and feel very strongly about there are feelings about wicked in the world This is a non spoiler review of wicked There are definitely some things that happen in this movie that are exciting that we don't want to ruin for you. So FYI, we're gonna try to keep it as fresh for you as possible fresh as Glinda coming down in her little Sparkly pink bubble into Munchkin land Come with me what to beat the wizard? So yes, no spoilers for a prequel but Basically this movie it kicks off with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West as seen in 1939's The Wizard of Oz and before that, of course in the novels by Frank Baum, but Really went down Who's really the bad guy? That's what we're exploring here in this musical. That is the first of two parts You're not seeing the words part one on a single poster out there But they sure do pop up in the title card. So yeah, we are taken back to The childhood of Elphaba. Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West had a name And she was born green After her mother had a dalliance and so she grew up unloved by her father and was ostracized by other people because of the color of her skin, but she Developed powers through her rage. She's kind of a Carrie She can if she get her mad enough and she will move stuff with her mind and you don't want to be there when it Happens, so she's dropping her younger sister off at school at Shiz University and her father's like, you know Make sure she gets into a room. Okay, and While she's sort of observing what's going on. She loses her temper has a big telekinetic freakout and the the school's Magic instructor Played by Michelle Yeoh is like you I want to give you a scholarship And so she starts attending there as well winds up rooming with a pretty popular mean girl Galinda played by Ariana Grande they immediately despise each other but grow to a certain detente and even friendship between the two of them and Then of course things get complicated Once they're off to see the wizard and you did not love this. I didn't And I you know, I was interested in it. Like I mean, God knows the marketing juggernaut has been inescapable I never saw the Broadway show. I never read the novel by Gregory Maguire I I have a vague outline of what this stuff is. I've seen Kristin Chenoweth in concert So I've seen her, you know some of these songs and I know that without Idina Menzel belting defying gravity. We would never have had Idina Menzel belting. Let it go So I get the importance of wicked in the pop culture landscape But I found this movie just kind of not engaging. The costumes are great There's a lot of craft going on here with the sets and and a lot of the sort of digital, you know Gimmickry that's going on to kind of bring this magical world alive But I just never got on board the plot I never really cared that much about the characters because because it's a prequel you sort of know where it's all going so Everything we're gonna get is kind of little waysides. And did you know and here's what actually you know along the way and you there's A way to make that compelling but this movie just didn't do that for me. I'm not in love with the songs There's the two big ones that everybody know and everybody knows and they both appear in the first half of the show Apparently so part two I bet is gonna be reprise central. We'll cross that Rainbow Bridge when we get there But yeah, I you know, I like Cynthia Erivo a lot She is she's really giving it both as an actress and as a singer Ariana Grande has some real comet chops I don't know how much of her performance is based on what Chenoweth originally did on Broadway But I mean she's making it work for the big screen. There are times when she sings that I Don't understand what she's saying Like she has a whole big opening number when Glinda first appears where literally I was like my god my kingdom for a consonant I couldn't I didn't know what was being said and we were in the Dolby Theater We were in the big shiny Dolby Theater with the reclining seats and all that. Yes Yes, like the sound you know should have been like really on point. There's a certain kind of fakie gloss to contemporary musicals that often I find kind of off-putting and like like It can work like I liked Wonka pretty well and I like, you know, the color purple Examples but there was something about this one that I just found kind of soulless unfortunately, it was either all way too bright or like too inky shadowy and I just didn't connect with it. I'll tell you this I got an early screening of better man the upcoming Robbie Williams biopic where you know Robbie Williams is played by a chimp throughout the whole thing and there's and it's not perfect I have some mixed feelings about that one as well But that movie has one musical number that literally made the hair stand up on my head I was so like just thrilled by it and it's very CG heavy and it's very a lot of sort of trickery involved but it has such a dynamism to the choreography and and to the the way that the music is used that I found thrilling and I didn't have a Single moment like that watching wicked. So you like the monkey but not the flying monkey. There you go So I was super into this for a lot of the time I thought it was dazzling It's what John M Chu does so well in those big numbers whether it's the big Emerald City number or the big Munchkin land number or there is a scene in a dance club they go to That is um, it's a lot of fun for a while and then it changes tone It becomes very intimate and very emotional in a wordless way that I found really surprisingly emotional Like it made me tear up. I was shocked. I'm like, what the hell? Why am I crying people were warning me bring tissues? I'm like not me girl. I got this like I've seen the musical. I know what happens I'm like, wow, that was beautiful and a lot of that has to do with just the connection between Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande and you really feel that bond in that moment like the intensity of the way that they lock eyes and they finally really see each other is So meaningful and you need that to be the foundation of this story because that if that friendship doesn't feel substantial Then what are we here for and who are we rooting for? Why do we care? So I totally bought their friendship and a lot of these moments were dazzling Nothing John M She's bread and butter, you know from from the step-up movies to in the heights like I think these big splashy musical numbers are where He really excels the big Jonathan Bailey number in the library at the school is really cool. That's some fun choreography The rotating it's like a telescope and like the rotating books and the ladders like all of that is really fun And when it's lively and just playing with color and lighting like I thought it was lighted beautifully Like there's in popular when she's really coming into her own and becomes like a really intense hot pink Like that I was emotional the way that the the dance club thing is lighted It's like dark but with kind of an iridescent rainbow sheen to it. That's really cool So I thought it looked great production design is Christopher Nolan's longtime production designer costume design I thought was exquisite like everything Ariana Grande wears every little pink poofy thing and then the Variations that they find with Cynthia Erivo's costumes as well As far as like different kinds of black different kinds of green the detail on just like the nails I mean everything was great, but it also has to address these very heavy Authoritarian themes which I had forgotten from seeing the show 20 years ago on Broadway. I guess they're in that as well I went back and I reread all about the the show the themes of like Suppressing certain minority groups and putting them in cages and like trying to keep them from speaking All that is in there fomenting fear among the populace to make them easier to control Right the wizard being like we knew this from Wizard of Oz that he's a total like Huckster, you know con artist Huckster he's all bloviating and and literal smoke and mirrors and And then not, you know, actually a man of any kind of substance or integrity. So we knew that You know and Jeff Goldblum is kind of deliciously evil in this couple of scenes there as the wizard But I feel like the tonally the swings between the razzle-dazzle and the heavy You know moments of like messaging here. Those were awkward for me Yeah, it kind of swings from like being the mean girls musical to being cabaret and it's like I don't know that it really necessarily Does that gracefully? Um? Yeah, I mean look I agree with you I think for you that intimate moment in the dance club does work and it is because it's those just those two Performers connecting with each other and saying so much in a wordless way, you know and I think if there had been more things like that that didn't just feel so overblown and like Pitched to the rafters and you know I think that this is gonna be the kind of musical adaptation where if you walk in Already a fan if you love this material, you love the show you love the cast album, whatever Then this is gonna be a big sort of swirling Souvenir for you of all the things you love and love but like writ large and you know with all the right you know kind of candy-colored stuff and Great and I don't begrudge anybody that enjoyment but as somebody walking in cold They did not bring me into the material in a way that I found thrilling and you know There are a lot of people who are gonna be walking into this movie cold I mean, you know only so many people go to Broadway even for the show That's been running for decades only so many people go to see the touring shows I'm sure a lot of people know this stage material but not everybody's gonna and I don't know what those folks Experiences are gonna be but I can I can only speak for mine and mine was Didn't didn't love it. Yeah, I thought they were both great I said, you know has this thing like there's such a like a directness about her and like there's so much emotions She can convey just through her eyes Yeah that really worked a lot and you felt her pain and you felt her strength and you felt her confusion and her Questioning her purpose here and then Ariana Grande. Yeah She's doing a lot of a Kristen Chenoweth did on the stage production of it but she's got a ride that line between being totally obnoxiously conceded and also like kind of adorably dorky like there's like a Jerky kind of perkiness about her that like makes her human and you know It's like she's not perfect all the time because she's kind of a dork. I could try hard I like that balance she found and she's a lot of fun to watch Yeah like she's playing somebody who is constantly having to put on this facade and this you know this sort of bubbly exterior and Erevo is giving you somebody who has learned to sort of silently bear like all this stuff That's been heaped on her her entire life this sort of scorn and ridicule and and you know suspicion whatever whether it's from you know Her dad or from you know, just other kids or whatever And so, you know, I think the two of them are fine and they bring what they're supposed to bring to the characters but I just think I found the movie just so like kind of glossy and empty and Dragged a lot in places and I love a musical I was on board for this and it just wasn't delivering to me. What? Anything that that I could come away with did you know that Jonathan Bailey had that kind of musical theater background? I did not know that I know him from Bridgerton Travelers, but like he played Gavroche and the West End in Les Miserables when he was eight like he has his whole musical theater background I had no idea. So that was kind of cool to see him thrive in that kind of way if you're British I just assume you can do it all American voices song and dance, whatever, you know, they've all good He's charming as hell and like he's asked to do tough stuff like the dancing the dancing at the singing He's a little I don't I didn't entirely buy him as a college student, but I just sort of like Yeah, okay, well, um, yeah, I think people people who love this are gonna love it It is it swells to a big emotional crescendo. And yes, it is part one I did know it was part one because I read Kyle Buchanan's interview with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande No, I didn't know that but I'd heard that as well But mind you like so we're gonna wind up with about five plus hours of movie based on a Broadway show that runs two and a half Under three. Yeah, let's say it ends where the intermission break is. So part two comes out in exactly a year. Okay? Meet us back here and we'll talk back here in a year. Yeah, so I will say I'm gonna say like a seven point eight Because I think it's great. A lot of it is really great in terms of being a spectacle, but it's just kind of awkward totally I'm a five point eight in that I'm gonna acknowledge the two lead performances and the craft of it but I just don't think it's a movie it it holds together or I Don't know. It didn't it didn't thrill me and it didn't move me and it didn't sort of Bring me into this world in a way that I wanted more of it You were not defying gravity No, no, I was landing hard. We'll see you back here in a year. Let us know what you think about wicked. Thanks