Time: 160 Minutes
Age Rating: PG
Cast:
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp
Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland
Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero Tigelaar
Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible
Jeff Goldblum as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Ethan Slater as Boq Woodsman
Marissa Bode as Nessarose Thropp
Peter Dinklage as the voice of Dr. Dillamond
Bowen Yang as Pfannee
Director: Jon M. Chu

While I’m not familiar with a lot of musicals, I’m certainly familiar with Wicked. So when a film adaptation was announced, I was curious about it. That being said, I was rather skeptical after watching the trailers. It didn’t look that great to me, and I really didn’t know what to think of the story being split into two parts. Still, I decided to check it out and it was better than I expected.

Despite how the movie is marketed, I will always refer to this movie as Wicked: Part One, because it is the first film of a two part story. It is quite a long movie at 2 hours and 40 minutes, and when you consider how little story it covers in the musical, the decision seems rather questionable. I was under the impression that the length and splitting the movie into two parts would mean that it would delve deeper into the plot or characters. It doesn’t really do that and doesn’t make the most of the runtime. With how the movie is structured, it can feel a little awkward, especially with the pacing. It feels clunky early on, but over time settles into a rhythm. While it’s not perfect, the movie still engaged me throughout. Having seen the musical live before, I can say that Part One pretty much follows the same story, and the little additions didn’t detract or distract from the experience. They also did a surprisingly decent job at making this first half of the story feel relatively self contained as a single movie (even though it blatantly feels like a first half), and ends on a high note.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are incredible and perfect in their roles of Elphaba and Glinda. Erivo carries a lot of emotional weight, and Grande greatly balances the drama and comedy. The two complement each other very well, they share wonderful chemistry between them, and their singing is great. The supporting cast including Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum are also very solid in their roles. 

I’m very mixed about director Jon M. Chu’s work here. A lot of the shots from the trailers really didn’t look that good, so I had some concerns going in. The visuals were a little better than expected, and it had moments where it looked good. However, it still has a colour and lighting problem. Some colours look muted, and the backlighting overexposure can result in some unfortunate washed out and poor looking shots, especially those set in the daytime. It is frustrating because despite it taking place in the world of Oz, it isn’t nearly as colourful as you’d want it to be. Not to mention, the rest of the technical aspects are great, especially the production design and costume design. It’s just as well that Chu seems to have a decent handle over the musical numbers, all of which I really liked. The only thing I will say is that while some of the added breaks during the musical numbers allow time for the scenes to breathe, sometimes they could disrupt the pacing and flow (especially during the last sequence).

Despite some iffy visuals/lighting and feeling a bit overlong, Wicked: Part One is a good and well done adaptation of the popular musical, with great musical numbers and performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. I am now looking forward to seeing part 2 next year and hoping it can deliver just as well as this movie, if not better.