Time: 137 Minutes
Age Rating: PG – Violence & sexual references
Cast:
Ariana Grande as Galinda “Glinda” Upland
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp
Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero Tigelaar
Ethan Slater as Boq Woodsman
Bowen Yang as Pfannee
Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible
Jeff Goldblum as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Director: Jon M. Chu

I had a lot of issues with the first Wicked movie directed by Jon M. Chu (which adapted the first half of the Broadway musical), but it was decent and better than I was expecting it to be. I was curious about how the second movie would turn out. It ended up being not as good as the first part, but it was fine overall despite its issues.

I won’t lie, I had a bad feeling about the movie just as it began. The plot development is rather weak, and the pacing is really choppy. Despite being shorter than the first movie, For Good feels significantly longer. Much of this movie feels padded out and can feel sluggish, somehow even dull. At the same time, it rushes through key moments and aspects that need more time and context given. It feels its worst in the first half, but it improves a little bit later on. The movie sticks fairly close to the Broadway musical, honestly to its own detriment. I think much of the movie is held back by its source material; the second half of Wicked the musical is its weaker half, the songs aren’t as great and the story is a mixed bag and makes some odd decisions. Still, For Good had the opportunity to improve upon it or even add its own spin on things. While it adds a few things and expands in some ways, it doesn’t make the end result significantly better. The worst stuff in the musical is when it incorporated Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz story plot into the narrative, and the movie doesn’t do anything to avoid making that aspect feel rushed. Dorothy is shown on screen but deliberately avoids showing her face, as if they are filming around her the whole time. It’s like they needed to include her but wanted to maintain her as a symbolic plot device and it was clunky whenever that aspect was present in the story. While delving in and making changes opens its own can of worms, perhaps trying to contextualise Dorothy and the other Wizard of Oz aspects in the story might’ve made them fit better. Despite my issues with the plot, Wicked: For Good is watchable enough that I didn’t have a bad time with it, and it really picked up whenever Elphaba and Glinda were in the same scene.

The two leads in Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are again really good. The relationship between their characters of Elphaba and Glinda are done well and believable, you buy into it and it carries much of the movie. As said before, the scenes with the two of them together are the highlights of the film. Erivo feels a little let down by the writing and directing but does well with what she’s given, and Grande also gets more emotional scenes to work with compared to the last film and delivers them really well. The supporting cast is generally solid, Jonathan Bailey is good as usual, Jeff Goldblum does more of the same kind of acting, and unfortunately Michelle Yeoh remains the weakest link in the cast.

Jon M. Chu returns as director after the first movie and while I wouldn’t call his direction outright terrible, it nonetheless drags down these movies from being as good as they could’ve been. Like with the first movie, it does have a visual problem, only looking marginally better than the first movie. The colouring and lighting generally look ugly and bland, the CGI green screen backgrounds and the CGI animals look off. It’s a shame because like the first movie, the production design, costumes and makeup are good, and it feels like they weren’t presented as greatly as they could’ve been. It does fare somewhat better when it gets to the musical numbers, and again like in the first movie, there are changes to the way these sequences are conveyed here. While not all the alterations work, they were somewhat interesting at least. One thing that carried over from the source material is that with a couple of exceptions, most of the songs in the second half of Wicked the musical just aren’t as good as the songs in the first half and are comparatively underwhelming. Even the choreography and presentations were a bit of a step down from the first movie. For Good introduced a couple of new songs that weren’t in the original musical, and while the attempt was admirable, the songs really failed to leave much of an impact.

Wicked: For Good feels overlong and stretched out, and has dodgy visuals and CGI, but is overall okay, benefiting from some good performances.