Review: Wicked, Part One, Is a Great, Big Hollywood Blockbuster for All Ages

I would be lying if I said I was among Wicked‘s many enthusiasts. I saw Idina and Kristin at the Gershwin Theater back in 2003, but that season, I was firmly team Avenue Q. The Tony voters were too: The latter famously scored a triple-crown upset to win Best Book, Score and Musical. Of course, Wicked ultimately got the last laugh; still running after 21 years, it’s an international juggernaut and one of the few contemporary musicals to break into the public consciousness.

There’s no doubt that Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of Wicked will have a similarly long-lasting legacy. Divided into two parts, with the first hitting cinemas on November 22, Wicked, Part Oneis a big Hollywood blockbuster, both a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie and a savvy adaptation that trusts the material enough to mostly stay out of its way. Are there flaws? Sure. But overall, I enjoyed it very much — far more than I ever expected to.

Loosely inspired by Gregory Maguire’s novel and fully based on Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s stage production, it opens with a closeup on a witch’s black hat reflected to look like a tornado and zooms out to show us the four heroes of The Wizard of Oz skipping up the Yellow Brick Road. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, and Oz is rejoicing. When Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande) arrives by bubble, she regales the citizenry with the story of how she and the green girl — Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) — were (gasp!) friends.

Wicked, Part Onefollows the preposterously perfect G(a)linda and the magically uncontrolled Elphaba during their time at Shiz University, where they are inadvertently made roommates. Glinda develops a crush on the handsome Winkie Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who just enrolled in Shiz along with his extremely tight pants. Elphaba is taken under the wing of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and gets her an invitation to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).

When Elphaba realizes that the Wizard is up to no good — namely, that he’s responsible for the stifling of talking animals like her professor Dr. Dillamond (a CGI goat with cute spectacles voiced by Peter Dinklage) — Elphaba takes matters into her own hands and is declared public enemy number one.

In short, Wicked, Part Oneis the complete first act of the Broadway show, presented in full, from “No One Mourns the Wicked” to “Defying Gravity,” albeit with more talking.

Chu has retained Wicked’s best asset, book writer Holzman, who penned the screenplay with Dana Fox (and makes an adorable cameo alongside Stephen Schwartz and the original stars). Condensing Maguire’s sprawling take into a stage musical that’s appropriate for a family audience was no small feat of structure and economy, and Holzman has found clever ways to expand her first act into what feels like a complete, self-contained story on its own. She gives us flashes of Elphaba and her disabled sister, Nessarose, as children — Karis Musongole and Cesily Collette Taylor are thoroughly adorable — and allows us to see the lifelong tension between Elphaba and her father, Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman, stern).

Schwartz’s score is the mixed bag that it is onstage, and the movie sags in the same spots as the show. “Something Bad” is less interesting when it’s being sung by a CGI goat instead of a guy in a mask who can let us feel real emotion. The Ozdust Ballroom sequence of “Dancing Through Life” takes forever to get through, and Bailey’s part of the song in Shiz U’s revolving library would be far more interesting to look at if it weren’t so washed out (the backlighting throughout the film is a real problem).

But the hits are the hits. Erivo is a little too sullen throughout, but she instantly lands us on her side with “The Wizard and I,” and delivers pathos and longing that grabs us through the screen with “I’m Not That Girl” (a number that also stops the movie dead in its tracks). Grande, channeling her stage predecessor Chenoweth, does right by “Popular” and lands every single joke through her complete lack of self-awareness. Their “What Is This Feeling?,” done in split screen, is hilarious, but too much dialogue is inserted into the climactic “Defying Gravity,” which kills the pacing of the number. It still lands with awe, but it doesn’t have the same impact it does onstage.

The awesome factor really goes to “One Short Day,” which allows Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks (whose work isn’t always as grim as it looks in certain scenes), and editor Myron Kerstein to show off the vibrancy of Paul Tazewell’s costumes, which nod to Susan Hilferty’s theatrical designs, and especially the jaw-dropping production design of Nathan Crowley. Crowley immerses us within the Emerald City in a way that almost feels like going to a theme park, an excellent example of the increasingly disappearing art of tactile world-building for cinema. The thrill that comes with seeing actors dwarfed by gigantic set pieces — not to mention all the money involved — is unmistakable.

To that end, Wicked, Part Onesoars where it counts, even if Chu and Kerstein could afford to trim some of the pregnant pauses that lead it to a two-and-a-half-hour running time. A visually spectacular tribute to the stage production, it has a whole lot of heart and is just plain fun. I never thought I’d say this, but bring on Part Two.