Are musicals born to become movies, or do cinemas have musicals thrust upon them? From the good (Chicago, Hairspray, Mamma Mia!) to the bad (Dreamgirls, Les Misérables) and the unforgivable (Cats), Hollywood adaptations serve as intellectual-property cash-ins, high-profile Oscar campaigns and important legacy building. What, then, will be the legacy of Jon M Chu’s Wicked, or Wicked Part 1 at least, which arrives some two decades after the popular stage show opened on Broadway in 2003?
A super-sized revisionist take on The Wizard of Oz, it imagines the Wicked Witch of the West’s origins, and asks if she earned her name. This instalment ends with the stage musical’s climactic Act One showstopper, “Defying Gravity”, a mic-drop moment if there ever was one. Part 2, comprising the show’s second act, follows next year. “Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” wonders pop singer Ariana Grande’s Glinda the Good Witch. Her winking rhetorical question is delivered earnestly, announcing the shape of the film to come but also its tone. This approach will likely please fans rather than win them.
British actress Cynthia Erivo (who won a Tony in 2016 for the stage musical of The Color Purple) plays Elphaba, a young woman whose green skin is greeted by her peers with screams of alarm. She encounters Grande’s Glinda – at that point known as “Galinda” – at Shiz, the sorcery school where the two are forced to share a room. Elphaba’s magic powers, triggered by emotions like shame and righteous rage, are her ticket, via steam train, to the Emerald City, the art-deco-style dystopian home of the Wizard himself. A meeting with the Wizard (a malevolent Jeff Goldblum) means a chance to be granted her heart’s desires.
A studious loner, Elphaba couldn’t be less like her popular classmate Galinda, whose cheery exterior and princessy pink outfits can’t help but recall another blonde, Elle Woods, as portrayed by Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. Like a self-possessed screwball heroine drunk on her own do-gooding, Galinda flirts with the rebellious prince Fiyero (Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey), while Elphaba begins allying herself with the school’s oppressed animal professors, who are losing their ability to speak.
Part 1 clocks in at nearly two hours and 40 minutes, the equivalent of both acts of the stage musical. Presumably the extended running time was intended to give the characters room to breathe. An awkward, overlong scene at an underground dance party sees Elphaba mocked for donning a witch’s hat. In defiance, she tearfully performs a kind of interpretive dance. Performed entirely without irony, it’s the film’s biggest misstep, and the closest it comes to camp.
As far as prestige movie musicals go, however, the rest of the film is more high-end. Erivo’s gorgeous voice has a purity that feels well matched to her character’s inner virtue. Her versions of “The Wizard and I” and “I’m Not That Girl” offer a different, heartbreaking flavour of naiveté to Idina Menzel’s original cast recordings. Grande’s riff on Galinda/Glinda is likeable but less distinctive, and less impish than Kristin Chenoweth was in the original Broadway show. Grande tackles the character with theatre-kid diligence, but can’t quite shed her own pop star persona: dainty, poised, smooth rather than spiky, her bubbliness all surface sheen.
Visually, the film can’t compete with the Technicolor beauty of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz. The world of Oz is grounded in reality, not dazzlingly hyperreal. This is less of a problem than it sounds: Munchkinland’s thatched houses are flanked by rows of rainbow tulips; an enchanted forest is strewn with glowing toadstools.
Director Chu is a solid candidate for translating the show’s bombast to the screen. The film-maker has form with elaborate dance numbers and large-scale ensemble casts, with Step Up 2: The Streets (the best instalment of an underrated trilogy), Justin Bieber documentary Never Say Never and the movie version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights under his belt. Chu’s Wicked doesn’t particularly draw from the Golden Age Hollywood musical tradition, his fast-paced editing instead borrowing from the world of music videos and hip-hop. “What Is This Feeling?”, which sets up the rivalry between Elphaba and Galinda, makes clever, comic use of a split screen, while the irresistible “Dancing Through Life”, the film’s best and most ambitious set piece, is performed in a spinning circular vault. Bailey’s swagger channels Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing: here’s hoping he has more scenes in Part 2.
“Wicked: Part One” is in cinemas now
[See also: Hollywood voyeurism at the Marilyn Monroe exhibition]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone