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Why? Why me? I’m a good person, well, goodish. Why do I have to review Wicked? I’m sure the guys are trying to break my will. Anyway, there is a lot to unpack with Wicked, so let’s get started.
I will start off by saying I’m a fan of a good musical. I caught the tail end of The Greatest Showman the other day and enjoyed it, I love The Music Man, Singing in the Rain and West Side Story. Yes, I have a soft side to me.
Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Then Slater, Marissa Bode, and the voice of Peter Dinklage. Jon M. Chu directs and it’s based on the stage musical.
The Story
The main story is:
Elphaba, a misunderstood young woman because of her green skin, and Galinda, a popular girl, become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. After an encounter with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads.
I’m going to tell you about the first 10 minutes, and this will give you an idea of what Wicked is actually like. The movie opens with the end of the original Wizard of Oz. We see a black witch’s hat in the water and Dorothy happily dancing back to Oz with the broomstick. Happily dancing away as they just committed murder.
There is a voice-over from Glinda, something that reminded me of an episode of CSI, which says:
According to the Time Dragon Clock, the Melting occurred at the thirteenth hour, the direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a female child. Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West is dead!
I honestly expected it to carry on:
The female child is approximately 5” 4’ tall, dark hair in pigtails and accompanied by a scarecrow, Robocop and camp lion. They appear to have a big gay following and are considered extremely dangerous!
Back to the real movie, there is a joyous celebration at the murder of the wicked witch. Everyone is having a good party because she was killed. Sets the tone nicely for the rest of the movie.
We see Munchkinland, well, I say we see it, it’s a completely different one from the original movie. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a ghetto suburb of Munchkinland as it seems considerably more… ethnic, than the original movie. Also, none of the Muchkins were… umm… little. In the original, the Muchkins were all played by short actors and children. Well, not here they aren’t.
I also didn’t understand why they didn’t just rebuild the original set. We’ve just seen Dot and the Gang, so it’s from the same movie. A shame really, as it would have tied it in better.
Glinda (Grande) turns up to spread the good news, that her old friend has been murdered. I kind of thought this made her out to be a bit of bitch. Turns out, she is a bitch, a self-obsessed narcissist.
One of the normal-sized Muchkins asks where the wicked witch came from. So Glinda tells the story.
A Product of An Affair
Glinda tells the story of how Elphaba’s mother was screwing around behind her husband’s back. Again, this sets a nice tone. Anyways, 9 months later, her mother is giving birth to Elphaba.
When she’s born, she’s green! This was surprising to everyone, including the talking wolf who delivered the baby and the talking bear who was the midwife. So, just checking, a talking wolf with a medical degree is fine, but a green baby is weird.
Elphaba grows up and we learn she has a younger sister. Her sister is in a wheelchair because boxes must be ticked. We also learn that Elphaba has powers, but she can’t control them, obviously.
As they grow up, the younger ‘leg challenged’ sister gets a chance to go to Shiz University. I swear I heard it called Jizz University at one point, which I have seen and is a very good movie.
Diversity Is Our Strength
At Jizz, I mean, Shiz University, there is every colour of the rainbow. In fact, at one point, I saw an Albino black kid. The uniforms are non-binary, so guys can wear skirts if they want to. The good news is that there doesn’t seem to be a straight person there.
I loved the fact that you have every diversity box ticked for the university, but when everyone sees a green chick, they all point and laugh at her. Diversity is our strength, unless you’re really different, then no, we don’t want you.
Anyways, Elphaba isn’t going to stay, just seeing her sister off, but ends up staying. Their dad drops them off and gives the paraplegic sister a gift, some diamond slippers. Yes, just to add insult to injury, let’s give a girl who can’t walk a new pair of shoes.
Glinda is there and she already has two best friends, a gay guy, and a fat chick. Tick, tick, tick those boxes. This is still all in the first 10 minutes.
At the university, everyone wears a uniform, apart from Elphaba and Glinda. Why? Don’t know. I think it is to help the lower IQ’ed remember who the main characters are.
Subplot
The two main characters hate each other, but they love each other in the end. In fact, I thought this movie was so diverse it was going to make them lovers, but alas, no, Wicked isn’t that sort of movie.
It seems all the talking animals, including a few of the professors at the university are being rounded up and put in cages. Elphaba learns of this and wants to see the Wizard of Oz to help him to stop it.
Act 2 is an hour-long filler that doesn’t need to be there. There is one scene, at a ‘disco’, where Elphaba does this weird dance and her, and Glinda becomes best friends over it. It was honestly the oddest thing I’ve ever seen, and I watched Longlegs recently.
Act 3
We finally get to the Wizard of Oz, about 2 hours into this bloody movie. Goldblum plays the Wizard and he’s basically Jeff being Jeff. It does turn out though, duh, duh, duh, that he is the bad guy! He knows about animals being rounded up and they turn the only white, straight male in the movie into the bad guy. Color me shocked!
Turns out that Madame Morrible (Yeoh) and the Wizard have been exploiting Elphaba’s powers, because the Wizard is impotent, well, when it comes to the magic he is. This is another example of bigging up women, but tearing down a male. When I watch The Wizard of Oz again, I’m going to be reminded what an evil, hideous man the Wizard is. Thank you Hollywood, thank you so bloody much.
Elphaba flies off, singing about defying gravity and that’s it, part one is over. Hang on, part one, there’s another one on the way? I think I’m going to quit being a movie reviewer and pretend to be a Russian princess looking for a husband.
The Cast
The cast is excellent, in all fairness. I know that Erivo seems like a bit of a psycho in real life, but damn her performance here is excellent. She really does hold the movie together and does it very well.
I found Grande to just, I don’t know, be there. Glinda is a narcissist and a right bitch with it, I wonder if that’s what Grande is like in real life. I do know that someone needs to give her a bacon sandwich. Ddamn it girl, get some meat on your bones.
As I said, Jeff is being Jeff and does it well. Yeoh is the same, although I don’t think she can sing. The rest of the cast are all just there… and doing their jobs.
A Wicked Musical?
I can see why Wicked did so well at the box office, it’s not a bad movie at all. The direction is by the numbers, not even Uwe Boll could have done a bad job with this. The production is impressive, even Kathleen Kenedy couldn’t have ruined it.
I didn’t find the music all that memorable. I hadn’t heard of any of the songs, apart from Defying Gravity, but the other numbers aren’t much to write home about. I’m guessing if you’re a fan of the stage show, you might like it more.
Overall
As I say, Wicked is not a bad movie, it is however, far too long, you could cut a good hour out and still have a decent story. It’s all far too nice! OK, it’s a feel-good movie, not like the usual bleak stuff I watch, but it started to get sickly nice towards the end.
The diversity stuff just got on my nerves. I couldn’t help but think that, if this was actually set in the time of the original movie, having a brown baby would have been enough to get people to point. Oh, how times have changed.
The production is good, the direction does the job and the cast is impressive, but it’s just not a movie I would recommend or rewatch, ever. Maybe if I was more in touch with my feminine side. Nah, I don’t want to do that, I would end up crashing the car every 20 minutes. Am I right guys… guys?
It’s weird, as well, that everything is the same but different from the original. As I said, the movie opens with the end of the original Wizard of Oz. Yet, Muchkinland, Oz, and everything else all looked different. If you’re basing a movie on a movie, why change all the details? I guess you have computers now right?
Wicked is a perfectly adequate musical. It’s not the best I’ve seen, it’s not the worst, it’s just perfect down the middle. If you’re after a special cuddle from your wife at home, then you might want to sit through it. It’s now on VoD.
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