Wicked looks like every other film now. That’s its problem. It may be the screen adaptation of the stage musical – itself based on a 1995 novel – but, within moments, it also tethers itself directly to the classic 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz. And while that film’s Emerald City and Land of Oz have been cemented in the public imagination as brilliant-hued dream worlds, and the most famous demonstration of the Technicolor process, Wicked is shot and lit like we’re being sold an Airbnb in Mykonos.
Characters are aggressively backlit, so that the audience can feel what it’s like to watch events unfold while also staring directly into the sun. There are ferocious performances here, and it’s clear that hours upon hours of intricate craftwork have taken place on the film’s sets, but director Jon M Chu (of In the Heights and Crazy Rich Asians fame) treats his Oz as if it were as mundane as a city block. And if there were ever a film that demanded Hollywood finally put to rest its obsession with flat, stark realism and return to colourful expressionism, it would surely be Wicked. In theory, it’s pure spectacle – its emotional resonance powered almost entirely by the lungs of lead Cynthia Erivo, as she nails those notorious high notes on “Defying Gravity”.
She plays Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, as she squares up against those who make her an outcast. As Glinda (Ariana Grande), the Good Witch of the North, tells us, this will be “the whole story”. Except, that’s not actually true. This is half of “the whole story”. Wicked Part Two arrives next Christmas. It’s not, though, much of an issue – Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox’s script doesn’t feel unnecessarily dragged out, primarily as Part One contains the real meat of the story.
Elphaba is born with green-hued skin and great, untapped potential. She’s rejected by her father (Andy Nyman), governor of Munchkinland, and fiercely loyal to her sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who’s frequently patronised or dismissed for being a wheelchair user. Both end up at Shiz University alongside this fantasy world’s equivalent to a Wasp, Galinda Upland of the Upper Uplands (who, later, for plot reasons, becomes Glinda). Galinda immediately sets her sights on Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey, bringing an outstanding amount of Kenergy to his role).
Was Elphaba born wicked or was wickedness thrust upon her? Gregory Maguire’s source novel preceded the whole trend of villain origin stories – later so enthusiastically taken up by Disney, though its somewhat undercooked metaphor involving the political oppression of talking animals isn’t given much more clarity here. Yet, stories about outsiders are always potent, and this one is expressed with real purity by Erivo, whose phenomenal vocal talents are supported by a palpable sincerity and self-assuredness. Grande, also bearing phenomenal vocal talents, has a knack for comedy that seems to wind all the way back to her days on Nickelodeon sitcoms, and it’s here deployed with lethal, pink powder precision.
Jeff Goldblum Jeffs it up as the Wizard, Michelle Yeoh is suitably withering as headmistress Madame Morrible, and Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James are often funny as Galinda’s minions. Paul Tazewell’s costumes and Nathan Crowley’s production design are as exquisite as could be expected. And there are certain sequences, specifically Galinda’s signature number “Popular” and Fiyero’s “Dancing Through Life”, where everything does click together nicely and the film suddenly sparks into life.
But it’s hard to escape the looming second half of this story on the horizon, which involves a terrible amount of explaining how everything and everyone in The Wizard of Oz came to be. Wicked will need to dream bigger and brighter, otherwise it may just fade completely under the spell of a classic.
Dir: Jon M Chu. Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum. Cert PG, 160 mins.
‘Wicked: Part One’ is in cinemas from 22 November
