Universal Studios
My best friend of many years has always been a huge fan of MGM’s Wizard of Oz.
Being a bookstore manager, when Gregory Maguire’s Wicked first came out back in 1995, I saw it right away and knew I had to buy her a copy for her birthday.
For several years after that, whenever Gregory Maguire had a new book out, that would be my birthday or Christmas present to her.
In 2007, I actually met Gregory Maguire when he came through my airport bookstore. There’s an oft-told and somewhat embarrassing story that goes along with that but I’ll pass on sharing it again here.
All that said, I, myself, have never read Wicked, nor seen the hit stage musical.
When it comes to the new movie version of Wicked, I’m not certain if that makes me the best person to review it or the worst? Let’s take a look at it and you tell me.
The fact that we see Dorothy and her friends along the Yellow Brick Road right at the beginning, as well as the fact that the title is in the same font as the 1939 MGM classic, tells us we’re essentially in the same world as the movie, rather than the original Baum books.
Unfortunately, that means the first real scene, with Glinda arriving in Munchkinland to confirm the witch’s death, occurs without Dorothy and her friends or the Wizard. What happened to them, we aren’t told. The word “munchkin” has long since become a euphemism for little people, short people, or even children. Most of the Munchkins here look pretty normal sized…at least as normal-sized as Glinda, played by the just over five feet tall Ariana Grande.
From there, the rest of the film is told in partly musical flashbacks as we learn that Glinda and the Witch, whose name, we learn, was Elphaba, knew each other back when both were students at Hogwar…I mean…Shiz University. In what amounts to an origin story for the so-called Wicked Witch of the West, we see her at birth, in childhood, and as a young adult, always shunned and mistreated by her father and others, solely for her green skin. He dotes, however, on his younger, white, daughter, who is in a wheelchair. He orders Elphaba to stay and look after her sister at Shiz, but when she accidentally shows her uncontrolled magical powers, she ends up a student there, herself, enrolled with, and rooming with, the ultra-privileged, Barbie-like, Galinda.
Galinda—not yet Glinda—is portrayed as a typical “Mean Girl,” popular, used to getting her way her entire life, overindulged, worshipped by sycophants, and vengeful when wronged. Viewers are led to hate her right out of the gate. About halfway through this very long movie, though, we see a massive—if not complete—turnaround and we’re made to actually like her. Toward the end it gets more complicated as she, herself, is revealed as more complicated than one would expect in this type of fairy tale movie.
Glinda and Elphaba become a surprisingly good team, besties, almost lovers it feels like at times. In large part, I attribute this to the amazing chemistry between the two actresses.
While Grande is the showier one, Wicked is Cynthia Erivo’s movie. Her quiet torture as she just wants to be normal after a lifetime of being taunted for her skin color is given even more depth than it might have had since she is a black actress. She simmers and broods until her occasional emotional breakouts and triumphant moments.
The harmony between the two ladies when they sing together is a joy, although I have to admit that none of the show tunes, appropriate though they were for their scenes, were all that memorable to me. I suspect I may be in the minority on that score…or rather, THIS score.
Despite some slow spots, the director, Jon M. Chu, has done an excellent job of opening up the play, with some amazing vistas and sets, as well as clever use of CGI SPFX. My favorite is the giant green train that takes our heroines to Oz to meet the Wizard!
Jeff Goldblum plays Jeff Goldblum as the Wonderful Wizard. If you’ve ever seen Jeff Goldblum in a movie, you know what to expect here, but you might be surprised by how well his patented tics and schtick fits the role of the con-man controller of Oz. Not sure if any political digs were intended toward anyone current but there are some sharp ones if you read between the lines.
The other truly great performance comes from the always delightful Michelle Yeoh, as the magic teacher who takes on Elphaba as a student, a project, and almost an apprentice, much to Galinda’s consternation. Intentionally or not, her character’s transformation toward the end of the film, along with the changes in all of the other characters, makes one question the exact meaning of what is truly “wicked.”
There are talking goats, flying monkeys, SNL’s Bowen Yang as a background player with little to do, and a terrible scene where a hot new male student is kicking around books and singing about it because he hates learning!
As I wrote, I’m not familiar with the book or the play, although I understand there are substantial differences between the two. I’ve also heard that new changes were made for this screen version as well. I have questions, though. We saw Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, the Lion, and Toto, which would seem to imply that the events of the MGM movie occurred…and yet they are set off only when Dorothy accidentally kills the Wicked Witch of the East. Who? She’s supposedly the other witch’s sister, and yet we know her younger sister, the shy wheelchair-bound student. She learns to walk, turns green, and evil just in time to have a house drop on her?
We’ll have to wait until Part Two to find out! This picture was so big it needed to be split in half! We get to a perfect stopping point though, and visually it is quite spectacular!
Includes alternate sing along edition, two audio commentaries, deleted & extended scenes, and featurettes.
Wicked may never become the classic it seems to want to be, but it’s fun family entertainment that works on multiple levels.
Booksteve recommends.
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