Skip down to ‘Review‘ if you already know my backstory with this project and you just wanna see what I thought. For the unindoctrinated, I just want to say off rip that:
- Wicked (the musical) is literally just okay to me and I had zero excitement about it being turned into a movie.
- I am not a big fan of Ariana Grande — she, too, is just okay.
- I have an active one-sided beef with Cynthia Erivo and I pretty much avoid anything she’s in.
When Wicked was first making theater buzz, I was in boarding school and my roommate was a voice major. In college, I was minoring in music. Then I moved to NYC carousing with homosexuals. Add those three things together and I have been chased by Wicked for my entire adult life and I don’t understand the obsession.
It’s definitely not a terrible musical (I have seen waaaaay worse) but the over-the-top adoration has always dug under my skin just a bit. The music is not that great but I do understand the attachment one can make to a mediocre song if it’s being performed by an outstanding voice. At least half of Whitney Houston’s discography would be a complete flop if it wasn’t being propelled by The Voice, so when the right actress tackles “Defying Gravity” (cough ShoshanaBeanTheBestElphaba cough) I get it. “Popular” is very cute. “For Good” is a lovely duet. However, all of the actual music is so cheesy and basic. Listen to Wicked and then compare it to something like A Chorus Line or Titanic, complete with all of the textures and chord progressions and layers of instrumentation you get with a really thoughtful composer.
So yeah. Wicked is not my fave and all of the most annoying theater people I know are obsessed with it.
Now, Ariana Grande. She’s a very talented singer, but she’s just not my vibe. I think Poppiana is her best version IMO and Blackiana completely loses me. When she’s soaring over a thumping four-on-the-floor club beat like “Into You,” it’s radio excellence. When she’s pretending to have the depth, gravitas, or swag to sing Victoria Monet’s best songs — completely unlistenable. Her voice is not big enough to handle R&B because there’s no weight on it and she doesn’t have the vocal maturity to pull it off. Aside from the music, her Little Girl image has just always annoyed me. That 30-year-old divorcee is still prancing around the industry like a teenaged fairy. Her oversized middle school sweatshirts phase was cringe. He general attitude felt dark sided to me even before she was licking donuts and stealing husbands. None of that celebrity gossip stuff really matters — I mean, Brandy killed someone and I still rock with her — but if I have no connection to the actual art being produced, it’s really easy for me to hate on the artist. It is what it is.
And speaking of stealing husbands, the reason Cynthia and Ariana get along so well on their little press tour is because they’re both homewrecking hussies with dark spirits. I have been Team Everyone But Erivo since she was making fun of Black Americans on Twitter. That whole British-Nigerian uppitiness about ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) put a nasty taste in my mouth that I have yet to fully rinse out. And then she was out chasing down Harriet Tubman and Aretha Franklin — if you don’t like us, don’t play our icons ma’am! Play your own! And now, her obnoxious reaction to the fanmade poster, her dismissiveness of interviewers, her eye-rollingly cringe answers to questions about this movie, and knowing Lena Waithe left her wife for Cynthia — very easy for me to hate on…
Because I don’t love Cynthia’s voice either. Again, a very talented singer, but there is a reediness to her timbre that takes me out of the moment. She can’t pull any emotion out of me because there’s no warmth there. Her “I’m Here” versus Fantasia’s “I’m Here” is no competition, because only one of them has soul in their voice. Cynthia Erivo has never sung anything that I wanted to play again — because there’s always another version out there by someone else who has more honey in their tone or more church in their delivery.
Even given all of that, I was still kind of excited to see the movie when the trailer came out because that is how you make a trailer! Four stars to everyone involved in its creation! The first time I saw the trailer, I put the date in my calendar so I could be sure to grab a ticket before the theaters filled up. And then the press tour hit and those two annoyed me so much I couldn’t imagine sitting through two and a half hours of annoying theater kids fulfilling their greatest fantasy on screen. Fortunately/unfortunately, one of my friends called me the other day and said he had an extra ticket though, so I went on down to the theater so I wouldn’t be left out of all the Gay Conversations from here to Christmas.
And gosh darnit, they made a delightful little movie!
Review
I never saw the musical and I haven’t listened to the Broadway cast recording in about 20 years. Everything I’m about to say is just based on the movie from the viewpoint of somebody who doesn’t care about Wicked. Let’s get the cons out of the way.
This movie is extremely long. The entire Wicked musical is two hours and thirty minutes, and they give you a 15 minute intermission between the two acts. This ONE ACT of the musical on film IS TWO HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES! That is ten minutes longer than the ENTIRE MUSICAL and there’s no break to go pee. I do not like that. I want more American films to follow India’s lead and throw a pee break in there because I am not getting any younger. I didn’t actually have to go pee in the middle this time (though I was about to bust by the end), but if I had been coming from brunch or something I might have missed an integral plot point!
But no I wouldn’t have missed an integral plot point because it’s very slow and not a lot happens. If it wasn’t a musical, you could do the entire movie in about 45 minutes.
However, it is a musical and the songs are meant to drive the story, add interest and excitement, and build your connections to the characters. Some of the songs do that, but I just find the music of Wicked to be very dry and not all that interesting. Bad songs can be saved by good performances, but a a truly great song can survive on its own, and Wicked doesn’t have any of those. You need magnetic performers to make those songs come alive, so if that performer is not present, there’s no point in having that song. Case in point: I don’t understand the casting of Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum. If Madame Morrible and The Wizard are both traditionally speak-sing roles (I don’t remember, it’s been too long), then fine, but Sheryl Lee Ralph was a Madame Morrible and I’m personally offended if they made her speak her songs like Michelle Yeoh. If I’m buying a ticket to a three hour movie musical, I want everybody in the movie to make music.
What the movie gets extremely right is the world that they’ve built! The sets and costumes are delicious. Everything they put Cynthia Erivo in needs to be in my closet immediately. Each piece of clothing was made to perfection and the sets were both fantastical but also rooted in 1920s reality. I was fully immersed into their little universe from the opening scene. I was a little curious about where Cynthia was getting fresh microbraids done, until they went to Emerald City with a full braid shop at the beauty parlor. So let me mind my business — apparently Ozians know yaki and kanekalon. Also: whoever was doing Cynthia’s Green Beat needs to be hired anytime they want to paint a Black Woman green because she looked so warm and natural, whereas Gamora looked to be halfway close to death in every scene of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The sets also work so well because the choreography feels like it was created in cooperation with the set designers? That whole “Dancing Through Life” sequence doesn’t happen unless you have a lot of detailed communications between many departments — which means Jon M. Chu, as the director, is really good at making sure all of the moving parts are doing what they need to do. I don’t know much about Jonathan Bailey, other than he’s the latest White Man With A Gym Membership that has the gays all aflutter, but I was so pleased at how Fiyero was the object of desire for every person he came into contact with, regardless of gender or sexuality. Boq was in love with Glinda, but he wanted to be raw-dogged by Fiyero. And Fiyero living for the attention is the kind of queer-baiting I miss from the hetero-teases I went to boarding school with. Jonathan had so much charisma with that little twinkle in his eye, I can’t imagine anyone else playing the role.
Also, I can’t really imagine anyone else playing Elphaba in this after seeing Cynthia’s eyes in every scene. She did so much work to convey emotion in every scene without saying a word! My goodness! Every time she was on screen, I wanted somebody to go hug that lady! It takes a lot of energy and talent to act through a big costume, like being painted fully green, but she carried it. There are better voices for those songs, so I won’t be playing them on repeat, but I have a newfound respect for her acting. I feel like there will be some angry responses during award seasons when she gets nominated for big awards and doesn’t win them, especially as a Black woman playing Elphaba with a layer of nuance you can only express when you know what racism feels like. I can already see the thinkpieces coming next February. And I do think she handled Elphaba extremely well, but there also wasn’t a whole lot to handle. If a full range of emotions from silly to sentimental is a 1 to 10, Elphaba as a role is a 6 to 10.
Glinda is a 1 to 10 and Ariana Grande took the whole movie for me. I had no idea she had that kind of range to go from slapstick to earnest and back again at breakneck speed. She was unexpectedly the heart of the whole movie, and you get a full cinematic experience from Part One based on her character arc. All of the laughs came from Ariana Grande. The best musical sequence came from Ariana Grande. The hardest tug on your heartstrings came from Ariana, because that duet with Cynthia at the Ozdust only works with the level of commitment Ariana brings to the scene. I would put all of my money on Ariana Grande winning Best Supporting Actress, Cynthia not winning Best Actress, and the internet rioting over it.
So. That’s it! I’m still a hater, but if you give me a good product, I will bite back my words and enjoy the show. A musical that annoys me with two leads who rub me the wrong way, and they made a movie that has me excited to see part two. If you do what you love and you do it well, even the naysayers will be silenced.
Score: 7.5
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