Wicked: For Good is the second half of a sandwich: if you liked the first taste, you’ll be thrilled to get more; if you didn’t care for the flavor, eating more isn’t going to convince you; and if you didn’t eat the first half, why are you even sitting at the table?
Eventually, the two halves of Wicked will be treated like Kill Bill, originally released as two films but always understood to be one lengthy feature. And so, nothing about For Good is going to change anyone’s established opinion about this musical adaptation, although even fans will note that the show’s two most enduring songs (“Popular” and “Defying Gravity”) both got burned off the first time around.
We rejoin the story, already in progress, with the re-christened Glinda (Ariana Grande) functioning as propaganda queen for the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and the real power behind the throne, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Huge banners proclaim Glinda’s “goodness” — much of the film is dedicated to the idea that the concept of “good” is a malleable one — while decrying the wickedness of rebel Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo). (In one of the screenplay’s many jabs at how authoritarian regimes use the media, Madame Morrible pointedly never refers to Elphaba by her given name, but only by her villainous sobriquet.)
For her part, Elphaba continues her efforts to unseat the Wizard and to tell the world that he’s a fraud, but the power structure of Oz blocks her at every turn. At one point, Glinda even tries to bring Elphaba and the Wizard together, an alliance that almost takes until Elphaba realizes his lies include the fates of many of the sentient animals who have disappeared from the land. Torn between these women is Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who finds himself betrothed to Glinda but still thinking about Elphaba. All these subplots and more come to a head when a certain girl from Kansas shows up.
Wicked: For Good has so much plot and character to contend with, in fact, that the musical aspects take something of a back seat. There are still songs galore, including a couple of new compositions, but with the exception of “Wonderful” — a razzle-dazzling number in which the Wizard and Glinda attempt to win Elphaba to the establishment — big elaborate musical numbers are jettisoned in favor of quieter introspection. This leaves the songs themselves more open to scrutiny, the success of which will depend upon the viewer’s opinion of Stephen Schwartz’s work here. (We all have our favorites; give me Godspell or Pippin over this one, any day.)
Director John Chu flexes his visual muscles, alongside cinematographer Alice Brooks and editor Myron Kerstein, in Glinda’s new solo number “The Girl in the Bubble”: not only has the sequence been constructed to appear like one unbroken take, but it also tricks us by turning direct shots of Grande into mirror-image reflections. It’s a neat bit of subtlety in a film that often relies upon a garish color palate and in-your-face messaging. (That messaging includes the Wizard’s observation that once the rubes fall for a con, they would prefer to stay fooled rather than learn the truth.)
Apart from Goldblum, whose eyebrows never seem to stop cocking, the cast remains mostly underutilized, with Erivo getting two or three notes to play (and playing them as hard as she can) and vets like Bailey and Yeoh stuck with barely-dimensional characters. Grande, who shines at playing the mean girl and the useful idiot, spends the latter half of the film forced to smile through tears, elevating her quavering chin, and the effect plays more like a for-your-consideration clip than as character evolution.
Any evolution should be appreciated, perhaps, as the story chugs its way to the finish line. Wicked fans can delight in one final visit to Oz, while those of us less enamored can hope that the yellow brick road ends here. For good.
Director: Jon M. Chu
Screenwriters: Winnie Holzman and Winnie Holzman & Dana Fox; based on the musical stage play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman; from a novel by Gregory Maguire
Cast: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum
Executive producers: Stephen Schwartz, David Nicksay, Jared LeBoff, Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox
Producers: Marc Platt, David Stone
Director of photography: Alice Brooks
Production design: Nathan Crowley
Costume design: Paul Tazewell
Editing: Myron Kerstein
Music: John Powell, Stephen Schwartz
Sound design: John Marquis, supervising sound editor/sound designer/re-recording mixer
Production companies: Universal Pictures presents a Marc Platt Production
In English
138 minutes
