★★★ (3 out of 4)
We’ve got trouble, right here in Emerald City. Critics are taking potshots at “Wicked: For Good,” the second half of the dueling witches musical blockbuster that previously stormed the box office to the tune of a near billion bucks and won 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Forget those dinging reviews and sing along with that “Wicked” parody song: “And goodness knows the critics’ lives are lonely/and goodness knows the critics die alone.” Ouch!
Still, fans of the show on stage anticipated the fallout. It’s no secret that Act 2 of “Wicked” could never measure up to the popular, gravity-defying, musical might of Act 1. The same applies to the film where after a rudely long one-year intermission, said Act 2, now rejiggered as “Wicked: For Good,” makes its debut as a darker, gloomier, frustratingly less dazzling take on the “Wicked” IP. Should you still see it? Damn straight.
No need to be bummed when Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are back as, respectively, the wicked green-girl witch Elphaba and the questionably good Glinda Neither has lost the vroom that made them both Oscar nominees last time. And Grande, stepping into the center ring after ceding Part 1 to Erivo, deepens Glinda with spiky shards of mirth and malice. She's coming for that Oscar and she deserves it.
And kudos to Erivo for turning the empty, big-number bombast of “No Good Deed” into a gutsy, anger-fueled showstopper that makes you cheer as long as she holds that thrillifying final note into what seems like infinity. I couldn’t be happier. As far as singing, acting and star power are concerned, Erivo and Grande are the undeniable queens of the world.
After a one-year intermission, “Wicked: For Good,” makes its debut as a darker, gloomier, frustratingly less dazzling take on the “Wicked” IP. Should you still see it? Damn straight.
The tougher job falls to the unfairly unheralded director Jon M Chu. What a shame that Chu couldn’t access the Grimmerie—that’s Elphaba’s book of spells—and cook up a way to make the overextended Part 2, again scripted by Dana Fox and the show’s book writer Winnie Holzman, look less like a padded slog at 138 minutes; on stage, the whole act runs less than an hour.
But enough of the woulda/shoulda/coulda since there are pleasures galore to be found among the clunky bits. Chu opens Part 2 with a maybe not-so-smart callback medley to the good stuff that came before. Then it’s onto the world building. Oz is a different place with Elphaba on the lam and Glinda getting all chummy with the backstabbing Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his scheming accomplice Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).
Harsh reality intrudes big time when we learn that Team Wizard has turned Oz’s elegant animal population, led by Professor Dillamond (a goat voiced by Peter Dinklage), into a mute hive of slave labor to build a yellow brick road. That metaphor of immigrant exploitation extends to the corrupted kingdom of Oz as a symbol of palace (read White House) authoritarianism, something Elphaba fiercely wants to eradicate as the film morphs from fairytale to anti-fascist rant.
Listen, it’s all in “Wicked” the 1995 novel that Gregory Maguire wrote as a prequel to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which also became a 1939 movie, now a classic, that opened to mixed reviews just like the movie we’re talking about now. Full circle.
I won’t spoil how characters from that OG book and film, including Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion (voiced by Colman Domingo), end up walking the yellow brick road in this one. If you saw “Wicked” on stage you know, though you might not be prepared for the body-horror transformations from humans into beasts or inanimate objects. And what they do to the Wizard, I can't even. Stick it out. You’ll never see the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in the same way again.
“Wicked: For Good” soars highest when it stays most personal, when we wonder how the handsome, conflicted Prince Fiyero, the ever-sensational Jonathan Bailey, can declare his love for Elphaba and walk down the aisle with Glinda. I’ve never much liked “As Long as You’re Mine,” the love duet for Fiyero and Elphaba. Until now. Now I could watch Bailey and Erivo sing into each other’s faces for eternity.
Speaking of music, a word here in praise of composer Stephan Schwartz, whose work on “Godspell,” “Pippin”, “The Baker’s Wife” and “Wicked” are enough to insure his place in the Broadway pantheon. He’s written two new songs for “Wicked: For Good”—“The Girl in the Bubble” for Glinda and the better “No Place Like Home” for Elphaba. Neither lands particularly well, at least on first hearing.
If you want to experience Schwartz at his melodic and lyrical peak, just listen to “For Good,” the ballad that gives the new movie its title and shows off Erivo and Grande at their most gentle and heart-piercing. A more genuine expression of the joy and sacrifice of friendship would be hard to find, especially after they go off on each other in a fight that lets long held-back resents rip. In the context of “Wicked,” the song "For Good" is a transfer of power from Elphaba to Glinda. “I’m limited,” says Elphaba, “just look at me I’m limited/And just look at you/you can do all I couldn’t do, Glinda/So now it’s up to you for both of us/now it’s up to you.”
If that song doesn’t you get you then “Wicked” has no place on your playlist. Or movie itinerary. Sure “Wicked: For Good” is plagued by limitations. But just to clear the air, “Wicked, on stage or screen, has never been about its politics or virtuous posturing. It’s about using music and performance to sweep us away on waves of humor, heart and rapturous romance. At that it succeeds gloriously.
In a recent interview, Ariana Grande hit on something that explains her movie’s emotional staying power: “I’ll see a little kid and they’ll say, ‘Glinda!’ That’s going to be the rest of our lives.” She got that right. What “Wicked” has—when you add up all five rollercoaster hours of it—is the kind of magic you can’t buy or fake: the makings of an enduring screen classic.
SEE MY REVIEW OF THE FIRST “WICKED” for ABC News https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/review-wicked-best-movies-year/story?id=116093662