Wicked (2024) Has there ever been a movie musical more self-congratulatory and self-loving than this one?
Has there ever been such a deluge of corporate cross-promotions of a movie than this one?
Has there even been a movie more hammered into the pop culture universe than this one?
Phew......we're exhausted already and we haven't even started this review yet.
In the golden age of movie musicals, the films existed simply to show you a good time.....make you hum the tunes, appreciate all the craft that went into the singing, dancing and staging. Musicals just wanted to lift your spirits for a few hours and show you a good time.
'Wicked' doesn't want to just entertain you.
The movie adaptation of the hit Broadway show wants to pound you on the head with all its many glories......and keep pounding you until you fall to your knees and pray to it.
'Wicked' doesn't beg for applause. It demands worship.
And you damn well better get in line for your opportunity to praise it the skies.
As for us? Nah. Pass.
Let's leave the rarified air of the Land of Oz and get real for a few moments......
First off, it's so bloated with ego (the studio's, the show's creators, the filmmakers) that it's overlong by at least a half an hour. It's a punishing sit for any reasonable adult. God only knows how antsy kids get through it.
It's stuffed to its rafters with dead, superfluous scenes that cry out for an editor.......like a Blu-Ray special edition where every useless deleted scene was jammed back into the movie.
And worst of all, it falls into that unholy practice that we'd hoped we'd seen the last of with the 'Twilight', 'Hunger Games' and 'Harry Potter' series.....the spectacle of studios, their mouths foaming with greed, dragging out their IP tentpoles to excessive lengths.
Yes, this whole 'Wicked' nightmare will return, like a horror movie slasher, for a second half next year.
(Oh, and by the way....memo to filmmakers: Nobody gives a flying f*** how Galinda's name became Glinda. Give it a rest, will ya?)
(Oh and second by the way....do we really need to see the CGI monkeys experience sprouting their wings as if going through the shrieking agonies of childbirth? Was that footage left over from a Blumhouse movie?)
Now you might ask, is there anything at all in it we liked?
We did.
Cynthia Erivo provides a beating heart and resilient soul that this movie needs. She's by far the film's shining MVP.
We nurse a sneaking suspicion that Ariana Grande's very funny Good Witch is an only slightly exaggerated version of her public persona.......a self-absorbed, superstar pixie forever floating in her own bubble, far removed from us mere mortals. Well, whatever. Her comic timing is impeccable and why studios haven't snapped her up for multiple rom-coms is beyond us.
(Which brings us to the best comedic meta joke we've seen all year (and that includes Ryan Reynolds' endless Disney snarking).......the sight of original Broadway Glinda Kristin Chenowith slamming her hand over Ariana Grande's mouth before she tried to sing.....)
Jeff Goldblum as the addled, mumbling, vaguely sinister Wizard Of Oz? Genius casting, especially when it's revealed the Wiz is a Trumpian fascist, keeping himself in power by giving Oz-ians minority groups to hate......which apparently covers Munchkins, talking goats and assorted weird looking people. So those grumpy apple trees from the 1939 film would be shipped off to internment camps.....and the Horse Of A Different Color would have to stay white all the time.
And yes, the dance numbers go all out with the kind of aggressive Broadway pizzazz that earned 'Wicked' its original reputation.
But Universal Studios decision to grab America by the throat and insist we anoint the movie with our undying love left us weary. Enough already.
2 & 1/2 stars (**/12) A shame, because somewhere deep in that overkilled, overdone mess, there's a 5 star 1 hour and 50 minute movie struggling to get out. Maybe next year........
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