Review: Wicked, Part One, Is a Great, Big Hollywood Blockbuster for All Ages

I’d be lying if I said I was among them Evil‘s many enthusiasts. I saw Idina and Kristin at the Gershwin Theater back in 2003, but that season I was a regular team Avenue Q. So were the Tony voters: The latter famously scored a triple crown upset to win best book, score and musical. of course, Evil eventually got the last laugh; Still running after 21 years, it is an international juggernaut and one of the few modern musicals to break into the public consciousness.

There is no doubt that Jon M. Chu’s big screen adaptation of Evil will have a similarly long-lasting legacy. Split into two parts, with the first cinemas on November 22, Evil, part 1is a grand Hollywood blockbuster, both a crowd-pleasing popcorn flick and a savvy adaptation that trusts the material enough to mostly stay out of the way. Are there any missing? Sure. But overall I enjoyed it a lot – way more than I ever expected.

Loosely inspired by Gregory Maguire’s novel and based entirely on Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s stage production, it opens with a close-up of a witch’s black hat that is reflected to look like a tornado and zooms out to show us the four heroes from The Wizard of Oz leaping up the Yellow Brick Road. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, and Oz rejoices. When Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande) arrives via bubble, she regales the bourgeoisie with the story of how she and the Green Girl – Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) – were (gasp!) friends.

Wicked, part onefollows the absurdly perfect G(a)linda and the magically out-of-control Elphaba during their time at Shiz University, where they are inadvertently made roommates. Glinda develops a crush on handsome Winkie Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has just joined Shiz along with his extremely tight pants. Elphaba is taken under the wing of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and gets her an invitation to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).

When Elphaba realizes that the wizard has nothing to do – namely that he is responsible for suffocating talking animals like her professor Dr. Dillamond (a CGI goat with cute glasses voiced by Peter Dinklage) – Elphaba takes matters into her own hands and is declared public enemy number one.

In short, Evil, part 1is the complete first act of the Broadway show, presented in its entirety, from “No One Mourns the Wicked” to “Defying Gravity,” albeit with more talk.

Chu has retained Evil’s best asset, book writer Holzman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dana Fox (and makes an adorable cameo alongside Stephen Schwartz and the original stars). Condensing Maguire’s sprawling tone into a stage musical suitable for a family audience was no small feat of structure and economy, and Holzman has found clever ways to expand his first act into what feels like a complete, self-contained story in itself even. She gives us glimpses of Elphaba and her disabled sister, Nessarose, as children – Karis Musongole and Cesily Collette Taylor are absolutely adorable – and allows us to see the lifelong tension between Elphaba and her father, Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman, stern ).

Schwartz’s score is the mixed bag that it is on stage, and the film sinks in the same places as the show. “Something Bad” is less interesting when it’s sung by a CGI goat instead of a guy in a mask who can let us feel real emotions. The Ozdust Ballroom sequence of “Dancing Through Life” takes forever to get through, and Bailey’s part of the song in Shiz U’s rotating library would be far more interesting to watch if it weren’t so washed out (the backlighting throughout the film is a real problem).

But hits are hits. Erivo is a little too sultry throughout, but she instantly lands us on her side with “The Wizard and I,” and delivers screen-grabbing pathos and yearning with “I’m Not That Girl” (a track that also stops the film dead in its tracks). Grande, channeling her stage predecessor Chenoweth, does justice to “Popular,” landing every joke through her complete lack of self-awareness. Their “What Is This Feeling?”, done on split screen, is amusing, but too much dialogue is inserted into the climactic “Defying Gravity”, which kills the pace of the track. It still lands with awe, but it doesn’t have the same impact it does on stage.

The awe factor really goes to “One Short Day,” which allows Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks (whose work isn’t always as bleak as it appears in certain scenes), and editor Myron Kerstein to show the liveliness of Paul Tazewell’s costumes, which nod to Susan Hilferty’s theatrical designs, and especially Nathan Crowley’s captivating production design. Crowley immerses us in the Emerald City in a way that almost feels like walking into an amusement park, a prime example of the increasingly disappearing art of tactile world-building for the cinema. There’s no mistaking the thrill of seeing actors overwhelmed by giant sets — not to mention all the money involved —.

For that purpose, Evil, part 1hovers where it counts, though Chu and Kerstein could afford to trim some of the pregnant pauses that bring it to a two-and-a-half-hour running time. A visually spectacular tribute to the stage production, it has a whole lot of heart and is just plain fun. I never thought I’d say this, but here comes the second part.