Directed by: Jon M. Chu
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Written by Anna Harrison
50/100
Before Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked: For Good” even begins—with Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) fighting to free the animals of Oz and expose the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) treachery—it has already run into one deadly, unavoidable problem: act two of “Wicked” is just not very good. Where the first “Wicked” succeeded in spite of its flaws (poor color grading, breaking up songs for no damn reason), the elements that made it succeed largely vanish in “For Good,” and the flaws of its source material are laid bare; if the first “Wicked” was surprisingly good, then “For Good” is predictably bad.
Its most glaring flaw is the separation of Elphaba and Glinda (Ariana Grande), whose relationship served as the beating heart of the first film. Here, they are apart, for as Elphaba fights for the rights of animals who barely have a second of screentime, Glinda serves as a propaganda machine for the Wizard and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, who, bless her, cannot sing worth a fig) as the two tighten their iron-fisted grip on all Ozians, animal and human alike. Glinda claims that she “couldn’t be happier,” but it’s clear something is amiss; the audience feels it too, seeing as Glinda’s relentless optimism shtick is much less effective without the more dour Elphaba to balance her out, and likewise Elphaba’s fight for the animals is hamstrung by the fact that we don’t care all that much about them, no matter how cute they may be, and she has even less of a supporting cast to interact with than Glinda.
This would be less of an issue had the musical not been split into two movies. The first did an excellent job of establishing the dynamic between Glinda and Elphaba, but the gap between installments has let some of that magic wane—the same applies to Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), whose smoldering looks towards Elphaba created quite a stir in movie number one, but now is immediately thrust into a romance with her after no lead-up in this second installment. The tension and momentum vanish in between entries, and instead of being shown why we should care about these people and what they mean to each other, we are simply told.
Granted, this is also an issue in the live show, but that only involves a fifteen-minute intermission, not a year-long wait coupled with an agonizing press tour. To give the movie some credit, “Wicked: For Good” does seem to understand that its source material is flawed… but instead of trying to address any of those flaws, they only add onto the existing material, and the additions aren’t exactly inspiring: Stephen Schwartz’s two new songs are forgettable at best (“The Girl in the Bubble”) and cringeworthy at worst (“No Place Like Home”). Since “Oklahoma!” revolutionized the genre, it’s been understood characters in musicals begin to sing when they are feeling so much that regular words won’t do; the songs advance the plot and are integral to our understanding of the world. What have these songs told us about the characters that they themselves haven’t already said or implied? Do they add anything to our perception of Glinda or Elphaba? Or are they, perhaps, just vehicles to add more songs to the Spotify charts, added only because legions of Arianators will stream them to death?
But worst of all is the treatment of existing songs, which drown out their performers in new, overly bombastic arrangements. Admittedly, the music in act two is less varied and memorable than act one, but there are two standouts, both of which suffer in the film: “No Good Deed,” while it sounds fine (Erivo is, of course, an exceptionally talented vocalist, and the rearrangement isn’t too distracting), looks like the equivalent of your childhood school’s sloppy joe meat. Elphaba blends into the reddish-brown background in what could have been some remarkable visuals, had the abysmal color grading not dragged it down into the dirt (almost literally, judging from how it looks).
“As Long As You’re Mine” suffers the most, however—or perhaps it was just the one I was most excited for, and therefore had the highest perch from which to fall. No longer is it the lusty, urgent song I remember; rather, it is sedate and infused with some absolutely baffling synths that sound more at home in the 1980s pop charts than Oz. Worse still is the blocking. The stage version’s blocking, where Elphaba and Fiyero merely sit knee-to-knee and grope each other every so often, would have likely been too static on film (I am no stage purist!), but Chu’s decision to have Fiyero and Elphaba constantly moving away from each other during their love duet is a degree of absurdity that I heretofore thought impossible to reach. Not only do they constantly walk away from their song partner for no apparent reason other than Chu thinking they should be moving around, Elphaba puts on more clothes during a song that is very much about having sex. It is obvious that Chu is dancing around the movie’s PG rating this entire song—indeed, this entire film—and it feels excruciating to catch a glimpse of Elphaba’s racy lingerie as she does anything but look at the man she is ostensibly in love with. And, once again (!!!), the song is broken up by stupid, stupid, stupid pauses for dialogue, less egregiously than “Defying Gravity” was but enough to make me want to claw my eyes out.
It’s only the committed performances of Grande and Erivo—plus a smattering of goodwill left over from the first movie and, surprisingly, Ethan Slater’s Boq, whose brief moment of body horror is perhaps the only time where the movie goes whole hog on something—that make “For Good” anything other than bland. At a certain point, people, you have to commit. Either make the song sexy or don’t. Either show the effects of the Wizard’s facism or don’t. Either have Elphaba’s relationship with her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode, bland), mean something or don’t. Some of these are issues with the stage version, and some of these are entirely a result of Chu wanting to have his cake and eat it too. Though Elphaba and Glinda might be changed for the better by the end of the movie, the source material certainly wasn’t, and neither was I.
“Wicked: For Good” Trailer
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