Is Wicked Popular with Critics?

Photo: Universal Pictures

Was wickedness thrust upon Jon M. Chu’s movie adaptation of Wicked by the critics? After months of an aggressively pink and green press tour filled with emotional interviews and inescapable movie theater etiquette pre-show ads by AMC, Wicked has broken out of Oz and landed back on Earth when it premiered in Sydney on November 3. As cinemas prepare to quiet down hoards of theater kids belting out “Defying Gravity,” film critics are analyzing Chu’s take on the musical phenomenon, and many were as enchanted by the land of Oz as theater fans are, even if the movie can be overstimulating at times. But even the few nay-sayers, who felt the film’s “sense of self-importance” wasn’t believable or that something was missing underneath the star power of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s performances, can’t hold down Wicked, who’s estimated to earn over $100 million during opening weekend. Because if you were born green, or in this case, born looking for a good time at the movies, you can’t change who you are. Nonetheless, here’s how critics are feeling about Wicked: Part One— the good, the bad, and everything in between.

“For all its ambition and cinematic pyrotechnics, Wicked doesn’t feel like it’s been opened up that much from the source, maybe because the play is already huge and eye-popping. So much of the show consists of speeches, tours, grand expositions — people speaking and singing to and with large crowds. That makes some organic sense in a stage production, but it can be wearying when translated to film. Reinforcing the sense of overarching allegory, the population of Oz is basically a blank mass of imbeciles, easily manipulated and fickle to a fault. They’re all chorus, all the time. Meanwhile, we keep waiting for the main characters to show some delicacy of emotion, something subtle and human, something to make us care for them beyond their status as icons or symbols.” — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

“Grande and Erivo give Stephen Schwartz’s songs — comedy numbers, introspective ballads, power anthems — effortless spontaneity. They help us buy into the intrinsic musical conceit that these characters are bursting into song to express feelings too large for spoken words, not just mouthing lyrics and trilling melodies that someone spent weeks cleaning up in a studio. The decision to record the songs live on set whenever possible is a major plus… While suspension of disbelief can be hard to achieve in contemporary movie musicals, Grande and, especially, Erivo (who does her best screen work to date, making Elphaba the bruised, beating heart of the film with a performance of breathtaking raw vulnerability and emotional shading) draw us into the story and the characters’ experiences to a degree that lets us forget the genre’s inherent artificiality.” — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Any trip to Oz requires top-of-the-line craftsmanship, so a big shout-out to the sparkling cinematography of Alice Brooks, costume design of Paul Tazewell, production design of Nathan Crowley and the dazzling choreography of Christopher Scott. John Powell’s thrilling musical score, blending with Schwartz’s iconic tunes, is note-perfect. Chu has made a movie musical — the best since Chicago, even if it ends with its own “intermission” — that manages to stand on its own as a fully satisfying screen entertainment and also serves as a delicious invitation to an upcoming second half that I quite frankly can’t wait to see.” — Pete Hammond, Deadline

“Home is where Dorothy was trying to get all along, of course, though Chu clearly designed Wicked to be experienced the old-fashioned way: on the biggest screen you can find, among a crowd of giddy theatergoers (inevitably singing along in some screenings). Unlike several recent tuners, which tried to hide their musical dimension from audiences, Wicked embraces its identity the way Elphaba does her emerald skin. Turns out such confidence makes all the difference in how they’re perceived.” — Peter Debruge, Variety

“But if you fail to feel the transformative magic of Chu’s Wicked, there are some good reasons: The movie is so aggressively colorful, so manic in its insistence that it’s OK to be different, that it practically mows you down. And this is only part one of the saga—the second installment arrives in November 2025. Wicked pulls off a distinctive but dismal magic trick: it turns other people’s cherished Broadway memories into a protracted form of punishment for the rest of us.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time

“The director Jon M. Chu opens Wicked big and only goes bigger, at times to a fault. His credits include Crazy Rich Asians and the musical In the Heights, but Wicked is a horse of another color and it’s filled with huge sets, some dozen musical numbers and many moving parts that generations of fans know intimately. From the start, Chu gives Wicked an accelerated pace, amping it with restless, swooping camerawork and overloading it with a surfeit of everything, with ceaselessly moving bodies and eye-popping props. There’s much to ooh and ahh over, be it Elphaba’s eyeglasses with their seashell spiral or her beautiful Issey Miyake-style pleats, but Chu’s revved-up maximalism doesn’t leave much room to savor it.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“If you’re not already a devotee of the musical, though, you may not be converted. The film ends with a song called Defying Gravity, so it’s only fair to say that that’s precisely what Wicked doesn’t manage to achieve. It doesn’t take flight. It doesn’t have the terrific jokes, the startling twists or the stunning dance routines that might have cast a spell on you, and it’s weighed down by under-developed subplots and under-used supporting characters (who presumably have their moment in Part Two), as well as by its own sense of self-importance. With every lung-busting empowerment anthem, Wicked seems to be declaring that it’s a significant work of art. And yet the message about not mistreating people just because they have green skin isn’t exactly subtle, and the questions the film answers aren’t exactly urgent. Why does Elphaba wear a pointy hat? Why did Galinda change her name to Glinda? How can the flying monkeys fly? Why is the yellow brick road yellow? These aren’t the most vital issues in the world, but if you are keen to see a Wizard of Oz prequel, I’d recommend Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful, which came out in 2013.” — Nicholas Barber, BBC

“But Wicked will delight fans of the stage production as a faithful adaptation that is at once playful but reverent to the iconic “Defying Gravity.” It remains a story of understanding and togetherness despite social power structures that depend on fear and divisiveness. With another installment on the way, Wicked is already too big to fail. But the weight of expectations is a heavy thing to bear and they bog down this capable movie version on its way to liftoff. The film may struggle to take flight, but when it does, it is undeniably moving, with a message of freedom and defiance that resonates now more than ever.” — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times