Wicked is based on the long running musical which does that tiresome thing of giving us the origins story of a particular character or characters. I’ll be honest that I have never seen the musical so how this compares to that version is something out of my expertise. The first part shows Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Ariana Grande) as they arrive at Shiz University.
The film starts off at the end of The Wizard of Oz with the Wicked Witch killed and someone asks Glinda if she were friends with the witch and Glinda says yes but she was nice once and in some sort of Wayne’s World flashback we go right to the beginning. The film does a good job of introducing Elphaba and it's surprising that she didn’t turn bad before she got to Shiz. Galinda is hard to like at first. When she is the pretty girl at school and everyone is tripping over themselves to be nice to hear it just felt like they were going for a cliche but thankfully as the film progresses she becomes more likeable.
There were some unfortunate things that just reminded me of other things. Firstly, Shiz University and the unusual teachers did remind me of Hogwarts. Even the scrolls explaining what dorm people were in reminded me of the hat they used in Harry Potter. It felt like they came up with the scrolls to avoid the comparison (which clearly failed). Another reminder was the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda reminded me of Enid and Wednesday in the Netflix series.
There are plenty of things to like about this film. Firstly and perhaps the most important thing is the relationship between Erivo and Grande. They have shown on the press tour to near sickening levels that they are close and once the relationship softens it's clear that their real life relationship isn’t too far from what we see on screen. Despite being two completely different types of people Elphaba and Glinda do seem like they would end up being friends with each other if this were a real situation. Another thing is that despite being two and a half hours long the plot doesn't feel like it's padding things out until the cliffhanger. I thought that the special effects were quite well done and despite some iffy lighting issues the film looked really nice. They must have been aware of the Harry Potter similarities and did a good job to try and make this feel different enough.
Jeff Goldblum is always great and he is just as great in this as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and it's just a shame that he doesn't appear until nearly the two hour mark. Obviously he will feature more in the second part but the small amount of Jeff Goldblum was just enough. I thought that Michelle Yeoh wasn't the best in this film. Normally she is great in whatever she is in but in this case she was slightly miscast.
Being a musical the songs are quite an important part of the film and to be fair they are pretty good. Defying Gravity is the best one and they were wise in leaving that until the end. The ending was quite good as it felt like a natural break in the story.
There is a little bit of pacing issue for a few minutes once Elphaba lets the cub out and the song could have been cut but it's at this point the shift of the film moves to Oz and this is when we meet the Wizard. This is when the film takes on a more serious and darker tone when Elphaba decides she doesn't like the way that things are going. Everyone is out to get her and she has gone from being the potential hero for the Wizard and for Madame Morrible to being public enemy number one.
Its difficult to properly review this film as its the first part of a two part story but if you judge it as a film in its own right then its still a fun film. Despite being two and a half hours long and the slight pacing issues, the film never felt like it had outstayed its welcome or that there was any padding to get things to this duration. The performances are all really good, the story is structured right to avoid a disjointed overall story and its directed with pace and songs that help the whole time fly by. Time will tell whether the second part can live up to the first but it will be a tall order cause I enjoyed this film way more than I thought as musicals aren’t really something I enjoy all that much.
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