Movie Review: 'Wicked Part 1'

Wicked Part 1

Directed by John M. Chu

Written by Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox

Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum

Release Date November 22nd, 2024

Published November 22nd, 2024

I really enjoy musicals. I love movie musicals. I love the Tom Hooper adaptation of Les Miserables. All of this is mentioned to lay out my qualifications as someone who is more than merely open to loving musicals. And I was open to loving Wicked Part 1, even as I have never experienced the stage musical beyond seeing Idina Menzel sing Defying Gravity in a clip on Tik Tok. So, why don’t I love Wicked Part 1? I’m not quite sure. I don’t dislike Wicked, I recommend you see Wicked, but this article is going to be about me trying to figure out why I like but don’t love Wicked.

Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the woman who will become the famed and reviled Wicked Witch of the West. Elphaba was born green and this has rendered her as an outcast from birth. Thus, when she arrives at Shiz University, she’s a spectacle, whether she wants to be or not. This is magnified by her first meeting with the most popular student at Shiz, Galinda (Ariana Grande), a pink and bubbly young woman who desires to become a witch under the tutelage of the university’s most well known and respected sorceress, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).

But, rather than be drawn to the popular Galinda, Madame Morrible sees the power of Elphaba when Elphaba’s anger causes her magical powers to appear and wreak havoc. Elphaba isn’t even supposed to be a student at Shiz, she was merely accompanying her younger sister, Nessa (Marissa Bode), but when a professor refuses to listen to Nessa’s desire to take care of herself, she’s in a wheelchair but desires independence, Elphaba’s rage briefly gets the best of her.

This is an early indication that Elphaba’s power is based in anger, something that will drive much of the narrative of Wicked as she softens and becomes more open through her rivalry turned friendship with Galinda. At first, the two loathe each other but after Galinda does something kind for Nessa, encouraging a munchkin boy named Bok (Ethan Slater) to ask Nessa to a dance, Elphaba begins to see her in a new light. The two find common ground and are soon best friends.

Their bond will be tested on multiple fronts however. One of these fronts is the arrival of a shallow but handsome young man named Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). Elphaba is shocked to find that Fiyero doesn’t seem put off by her green skin and the two have a charming first encounter. But, it’s Galinda who takes to Fiyero the most, telling her newfound best friend that she intends to marry Fiyero, whether he’s into it or not. Elphaba and Fiyero meanwhile, find common ground when a beloved professor, a talking goat, Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), is forcefully removed from his professorship. Replaced by a man who opens his first lesson by caging a young lion, Elphaba and Fiyero work together to free the lion cub and set in motion a plan to fight for the talking animals of Oz.

The other front facing Elphaba and Galinda involves The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Having become a protege of Madame Morrible, Elphaba is invited to travel to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard. She brings Galinda, recently renamed Glinda, and the two are met with a challenging, reality shifting situation that will find their aims at odds with each other once again. With Elphaba looking to destroy the status quo and Glinda conflicted over her future, we end part one on an ambiguous note as to where the best friends stand.

It’s a terrific narrative, exceptionally well performed by Erivo and Grande who feel like old friends by the time they are messing about their dorm room with Glinda looking to makeover her new friend. Wicked gains wonderful momentum once we’ve brought Grande and Erivo together via a pair of sensational musical sequences, Ozdust Duet and Popular. Popular is an especially well timed sequence as we finally get a bit of fun to go with the heavy themes about racial identity, oppression of minorities, and the kind of tactics fascists use to divide the populace. Grande shines bright in Popular and I can imagine her dance sequence in her Oscar night reel.

Erivo has the tougher role as Elphaba doesn’t get much chance to do more than suffer. Her strength shines through a few times and when she starts to show a little edge in standing up to Galinda, we see the potential for her performance. I have to imagine we will get the full breadth of Erivo’s performance in part two. Here, we really only see her dynamic capability at the end when she bursts forth on the showstopping, quite literally showstopping, performance of Defying Gravity. There is no questioning Erivo’s ability to belt, and Defying Gravity reminded me of hearing Jennifer Hudson nail “And I’m Telling You, I’m Not Going” in Dreamgirls, a performance that won Hudson an Academy Award.

So, with all of the good of Wicked Part 1, why do I like and not love Wicked Part 1? The main issue is the pacing. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, Wicked occasionally feels every bit as long as it is. The film seems to be crawling at times when it should be soaring. I was also surprised that the movie wasn’t more colorful and vibrant than it is. There is an occasional desaturation in Wicked done intentionally to underline the more dramatic moments, that tends to be overstated. It’s a bit on the nose for moments of dark drama to be filmed dark and those moments broke my immersion one too many times.

Most notably, however, I didn’t love the way Defying Gravity was shot. The staging of Defying Gravity happens amid a chase scene as Glinda and Elphaba are on the run in the Emerald City and the action tends to interrupt the song, making it feel a bit choppy. Thus, Defying Gravity doesn’t soar the way it did on the stage, in the one clip of it that I saw on Tik Tok. Yes, you can dismiss my opinion on this one, I don’t have the context that lovers of the stage musical have. That said, I saw a video of the stage performance and I wanted the same feeling to come from the movie and it just didn’t quite get there, save for the very end of the song. Yes, Cynthia Erivo nails the final vocal on the song and sends us all home happy as we wait for part 2, but I can’t help but feel that Defying Gravity could have been even more powerful in a different, less chaotic presentation.

That said, these are minor points. I do like Wicked Part 1 and I do recommend it for fans of the stage play and non-fans as well. It’s a marvelous movie that I imagine will only get better once we have the full story in Wicked Part 2. Perhaps the emotionality that I am missing in Part 1 will come fully into being once we have the complete movie in front of us. It’s genuinely exciting to think that Wicked has even greater potential in its sequel which is not something we can say about many movies that arrive as halves or thirds of a whole.

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