There’s only one problem with ‘Wicked’ – and it’s not Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s stellar performances

• “Wicked,” directed by Jon M. Chu, is a film adaptation of the iconic stage musical — well, just a play.

• Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s individual performances and chemistry carry the film.

• While it can hang on its own, “Wicked” mostly earns its long running time.

“Wicked” is expansive, indulgent and a few minutes too long. It’s also extraordinarily, immersively good.

Directed by Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”) and starring Broadway and pop music’s greatest legends — Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Granderespectively – “Wicked” is a great adaptation act. The stage musical version is also an adaptation, the looser kind, of Gregory Maguire’s novel of the same name. In 1995, The Wicked Witch of the West was transformed into a tragic heroine named Elphaba.

If the novel reinterpreted the “Oz” canon, sketching what happened years before Dorothy’s house fell from the sky, and the stage musical turned it into something new, Chu’s musical film makes it feel new, too.

The film follows the same beats as the musical’s first act: Elphaba, a young woman who grew up marginalized because of the green color of her skin, enrolls in Shiz University by virtue of her wonderful, natural magical ability. She lives with the future Good Witch Glinda and uncovers a conspiracy that threatens some of Oz’s most vulnerable. Challenging it, however, makes her a villain in the eyes of the people.

Chu and “Wicked’s” screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox enjoy the relative freedom of time and resources of a blockbuster. While the film’s runtime looks absurd on paper — it’s two hours and 41 minutes long and only manages to tackle the Broadway production’s first act — it would be easier to call “Wicked” bloated if its most expansive choices didn’t directly serve its central relationship : Elphaba and Glinda.

We see brief glimpses of playfulness, snarky dialogue and lengthy sequences, interspersed with musical numbers that capture every beat of their changing relationship.

‘Wicked’ is focused on Elphaba and Glinda. Erivo and Grande’s chemistry sells it.

For the most part, “Wicked” doesn’t get too dialogue heavy and relies on its musical numbers to advance the story. When it decides to stretch these numbers out, it’s usually for a good reason.

These interjections range from two snazzy extra bars to aid a lyric sync to turning already long songs like “Dancing Through Life” into extended turning points in Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship.

As in the stage musical, Glinda lends Elphaba the ugliest hat in her closet for a party. She is ridiculed upon arrival, but after she starts dancing alone, Glinda joins her and the two become friends. “Wicked” takes its sweet time with that dance sequence – and in turn gives it the narrative weight it deserves.

That relationship wouldn’t work without the individual performances of Erivo and Grande. Grande fades into Glinda, and only a few times will you hear a well-deserved vocal styling reminiscent of her personal discography. Vocally, she soars, delivering songs like “Popular” with dizzying confidence.

However, her performance shines best in her comedic sensibility. She easily riffs off Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, who plays a Winkie prince the two meet at school, or her classmate sycophants, played by Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James. This should be enough to earn her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress challenger.

Erivo delivers the film’s earthy performance, capturing the vulnerability, naivety and girliness beneath her character’s bristling exterior. When you finally hear her sing “The Wizard and I”—the film’s standout number—it’s far enough that you waiting for that. Erivo, of course, smashes it, drawing on Elphaba’s deep sense of joy and curiosity as she fantasizes about the wizard curing her social outcast.

The One Problem With ‘Wicked’

It’s clear, from their indescribable chemistry on screen, that both actors are having the time of their lives in these roles – and that goes for the rest of the production as well. On the other hand, if there’s one crime that “Wicked” commits, it’s perhaps that it loves itself and its source material a little too much.

The film goes to great lengths to pay respect to the original stage musical, including in an utterly euphoric cameo best left unspoiled for the true “Wicked” enthusiasts. In other cases, like its repeated invocation of the “For Good” theme from the second act of the score, it can feel too self-referential.

“Wicked” also begins to hang on to its tone-shifting endgame. Most cruelly, it shatters its momentum during “Defying Gravity,” where Elphaba, now an enemy of the state after refusing to conspire with the wizard, successfully gains the power of flight to escape.

Instead of letting Erivo’s extraordinary vocal performance and music drive the film’s climax, “Wicked” dampens Elphaba’s progress with too many brief action sequences, dialogue exchanges and additional musical interludes. Towards the end of the film – and in anticipation of Erivo’s final notes – it’s too much.

Ultimately, though, “Wicked” is one of the best musical adaptations to come out recently. Chu renders his vision of Oz with clear passion and humility, making storytelling decisions that successfully argue why this was supposed to be a two-part film.

At least I won’t complain about getting another two (or more) hours like these.

“Wicked,” also starring Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum, opens Friday.

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