Wicked: Part One Review

Wicked: Part One Review

This weekend is Glicked, we got two big budgeted movies with Wicked and Gladiator II. I was able to see both movies this weekend. First, I wanted to review Wicked. This is an interesting one, because I wasn’t really feeling the trailers for this movie. I didn’t think they did a great job of selling the outsiders on the movie and why they should go see it. But all of the early reviews for the movie have been fantastic so I was very curious to see if it lived up to the hype. What did I think about it? Let’s get started!

NOTE: I feel like with this movie, it’s important to talk about the knowledge you had going into this movie. I have not seen the Broadway play so I didn’t know the story, I didn’t know where this movie was going and I don’t know where part two is going. Also…I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz in its entirety. I started watching the movie Friday night, but I was having technical issues so I couldn’t finish it. That was my perspective going into this movie, I’m not familiar with this world at all. 

The Good

Right off the bat I really enjoyed this movie and it was so much better than I thought it was going to be. The best thing about this movie is the world building and how it immerses you into this world of Oz. From the very beginning and the opening musical number you feel like you’re brought into this world and you instantly want to spend more time in it. Some early reaction said this movie does the best job of that since Harry Potter and I think there’s some truth to that. When you’re watching this movie, you’re immersed by the production value and how much time they spent on the movie. It’s even just the little details of stuff that they could have done easily, but chose not to. In the trailer, you see a scene where Elphaba and Glinda get on the train to go to The Emerald City, the scene with the train lasts about 30 seconds. But they actually built a train, it wasn’t CGI or they built part of a train. No, they built a train for a small 30 second scene. They could have done it easily some other way, but they chose not to and those small little details make this movie feel big and fantastical. 

One of the things that I thought the trailers lacked was showing the heart and soul of the movie. My problem with the trailers was that they felt like they were marketing to the fans of the broadway show and not to the outsiders like me. That was probably the aspect of the movie that I was most surprised by, there’s more heart to this movie. The characters in the movie have these character arcs that are emotional, especially with Elphaba. Very early on we establish that she looks different from other people and we see how other characters would react to her. This provides Elphaba with this very unique world view, where she’s been discriminated against her entire life. Therefore, when she sees others being discriminated against she wants to do something about it. And that’s what drives her character arc in the movie and why she’s doing what she’s doing. You even have Glinda who is a nice contrast to Elphaba, where she’s the one that’s the popular girl on campus. She's the character that people love and know who she is. The two of them have this very interesting sisterly bond that connects them with being different. That’s what was missing from the marketing of the movie, maybe some of this would have been hard to market but they could have put some of that in there. 

As it is a musical you have to talk about the musical numbers. Like everything else in the movie it’s fantastic and on a production level it’s fantastic. The musical numbers are so big and massive, they use the cameras in a way to show everything that’s going on. Some of these sequences have what looks to be 30-40 dancers or extras in there and it’s all in camera. You know that there’s actually people there and not just them using CGI to add extras into the movie, the musical numbers help immerse you into this world. The movie starts off with a musical number and going back to everything I just said, it’s all in camera using these wide angled shots so you see everything. That's just the opening sequence, there’s more and more sequences in the movie that are big and impressive with how they’re shot and how they use the environment around them. One of the fun ones in this movie is with Jonathan Bailey’s character in the library. Where there’s this spinning aspect to it and it just adds something to it as you’re impressed that people are singing, dancing, and spinning are in the same sequence and the same shot. Every musical number in this movie is unique, there’s no two numbers that feel the same. All of them are impressive in their own ways and that’s just so cool. 

Also with this movie you have to talk about the cast and the performances. Our two leads in the movie are Cynthia Ervio and Ariana Grande, as actors giving performances they do a very solid job. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a lot of nominations come award season. They have fun chemistry with one another, you buy their friendship and their sisterly bond that they have. They play off of each other nicely, because they’re giving different performances. Ervio as Elphaba has to carry the emotional weight of the movie, her character arc is the heart and soul of the movie. She has her moments of fun and being quirky, but she’s the more heartfelt character. You contrast this with Grande as Glinda, who is more of the fun quirky character. She’s given the bigger personality that needs to balance playing this character that can be charming, unlikable, redeeming, all in one character that Grande does a great job. She’s the comedic relief character, she was the character that my audience was laughing at the most. Of course, both of them can sing so in the musical numbers they really pop and shine. Another fun one in here was Jonathan Bailey as the prince, I haven’t seen him in anything else. He is going to be in Jurassic World: Rebirth next year. I'm glad that he’s breaking out in Hollywood because he’s clearly a movie star. His character can be so charming and likable, but also be cocky but no matter what you like him and you want to see more of him. I don’t know how big his role is in part two, I hope he gets a lot to do and he gets more moments where he can be charming but also cocky. His musical number in the library is one of the stand out sequences, his song and what he does in the number is great. 

Another aspect from the trailers that I wasn’t really feeling was the look of the movie. I thought the CGI and lighting of it was a bit weird and looked fake despite having a $150 million budget. In the context of the movie, the movie looks great and flawless. It’s yet again another example of a movie that has a budget half as big as other blockbusters, but looks twice as good. I don’t know how much of this movie was practical and how much was CGI, but you can’t tell what’s CGI and what’s not. The scenes in which they use CGI, you can’t tell that it’s CGI. 

Finally, the glue holding this thing movie together and having the movie work as well as it does is Jon M. Chu, the director. So much of the positives that I mentioned about the movie go back to him as a director. Where when he directs the musical numbers or any other of the big sequences in the movie, they’re all shot and done in a way where you know what the characters are feeling and you know how big the sequences are supposed to be. With how much detail goes into the production of the movie, all goes back to him. This movie would not work as well as it does if Chu was not a great director. 

The Bad

The first thing that comes to mind is the runtime of the movie. I do think the movie is too long. It’s 2 hours and 40 minutes and I definitely feel that in this movie. I think it’s wise they decided to split this movie into two parts. I don’t think the movie would have been good if they had told this part of the movie in 80 minutes or whatever. The musical number where Elphaba and Glinda first get to The Emerald City, it’s a fun song but I don’t know if it actually added anything to the movie. You could have cut that song out and shortened the runtime by 5-10 minutes and it would have been a bit better. Without spoiling anything, it feels like they kept that song just so they can have some familiar faces show up. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s not that the song is bad, but I don’t know if it added much to the movie. 

Also, the casting of Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard of Oz was a bit distracting. I’m a big fan of Goldblum, I love his personality and what he can bring to a movie but him as the wizard wasn’t great. I was surprised just how late into the movie he shows up, he’s not introduced until the third act of the movie. He probably only has 15-20 minutes of screen time, it’s not very much. Therefore, since he has such a small role in this movie it feels like stunt casting. I’m 95% sure he’ll have much to do in part two, but in part one it was distracting. This part could easily go away with part two and I’m sure it will. Also, he’s not on the same level of signing ability as our leads. You can tell that the other singers are experienced and can sing very well. Goldblum sticks out as the guy who went to a coach for a little bit to learn how to sing for this movie. 

Final Thoughts: As somebody who was not looking forward to this movie at all. I did a blog post at the end of September when the runtime of the movie was revealed complaining about it and expressing how I’m not excited for this movie. After seeing the movie, I was completely wrong about all of that. I loved this movie. It’s a fantastic production with great world building, production sets, and musical numbers that immerses you into this world of Oz. Part two, easily one of my most anticipated movies of next year, I’m excited to see where this story goes because I know nothing. 

The Score: 9.2/10 (A-)