With the second part of his smash hit Broadway adaptation, director Jon M. Chu faces an unenviable task – bringing to life the half of the show that doesn’t have Defying Gravity in it. This he does while also extending the story by over an hour. Still, last year’s Wicked proved that stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have the chops to carry whatever shiz producers might conjure up in extending a self-contained story into almost 300 minutes of movie.
Picking up where Part One left off (and by this film’s logic, shouldn’t that have been called Wicked: Defying Gravity?), For Good finds Elphaba (Erivo) alone and on the run. Glinda (Grande) is now working with the state, under the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). No longer dancing through life, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) is a reluctant military man, just as reluctantly engaged to Glinda. As she makes a last-ditch attempt to reconcile rebellious Elfie with the Wiz, the pair’s differences finally reach breaking point, forcing the plot of The Wizard of Oz to happen.
For Good doesn’t exactly repudiate the widely-held belief that Wicked is all downhill after the interval. It’s a darker, more dour film, both tonally and visually. Everything which didn’t work in the first film (flat cinematography, shonky CGI animals) is back, but now the songs aren’t as good and everyone’s miserable. Heavy hitters No Good Deed, As Long as You’re Mine and, of course, For Good will get the blood pumping and tears flowing, but the same can’t be said for the rest. Two new songs prolong the runtime, but stand out like a sore green thumb.
Likewise, with the more serious tone, some of the tin-eared supporting performances are harder to excuse. Yeoh fails to up her game in any meaningful way, while the toxic relationship of Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and Boq (Ethan Slater) grates, and barely flows from the first film. Goldblum is… well, he’s Jeff Goldblum, and his performance is perfectly attuned to the film he’s in.
The real issue is the Wizard of Oz-ness of it all. Clumsily integrated, incohesive and straining logic, Dorothy’s arrival in Oz tramples all over everything the first half built, forcing its inhabitants to partake in veritable acts of lunacy just to make it fit. People do things just because that’s what they did in the musical, even if it doesn’t make sense for their film counterparts to do so. The story’s excess padding would feel justified if it helped justify these baffling character decisions, but all it really does is shoehorn in an extra Oscar-bait song for Ariana Grande.
And why not? She deserves it. Between them, Erivo and Grande make it work. When either party is onscreen, the weird-looking VFX and baffling character motivations don’t seem to matter so much anymore. Apart they’re magnetic; together, they’re electrifying. There won’t be a dry eye in the house by the time they launch into the film’s titular tune – even if it doesn’t necessarily feel earned.
Wicked: For Good struggles to recapture the magic of either the first half or the stage show it’s based on. It’s still a thoroughly enrapturing adaptation, but one can’t help but feel this return to Oz has come off the rails.
WICKED: FOR GOOD is out in UK cinemas now.
