David Mitchell-Baker’s review published on Letterboxd:
Kind of crazy how for a 160 minute movie nothing happens until about 100 minutes in, and, by its end, it’s got probably one compelling character.
Big Part One/too-faithful-for-its-own-good problems here. Erivo, Grande and Bailey are all doing solid work, the songs are good if staged and captured flatly, it’s got some great production design, and there are some surprisingly good laughs too (I apologise Ariana Grande, I was not familiar with your game). It’s just, as a cohesive whole, Wicked feels sluggish and empty. There’s a whole act’s worth of plot, character development and emotion crammed into the last 20 minutes, all to try and give this thing actual meaning and stakes, and, above all, to set up Part Two. None of it gets a second to breathe. The animal plot line goes… nowhere… and The Wizard? Like, yeah, I’m meant to be surprised that he is the way he is? But I did kind of enjoy the extended depiction of Megalopolis-come-OutKast’s ‘Hey Ya’ set that is the Emerald City. Unfortunately, Goldblum and Yeoh feel completely wasted and phoned in - I think you could genuinely tell this story without Michelle Yeoh’s character too and it wouldn’t be any different - Michelle, Jeff, I am so sorry. Genuinely almost burst out laughing whenever it cut to Ethan Slater too - I just couldn’t not think of how he ruined his marriage for this movie, and something about him just looked so ridiculous every time.
Hard not to be roused by ‘Defying Gravity’ - just inherently an incredible showstopper - even if here half of it is just two characters singing the lines at each other as they climb some dimly lit stairs. Will I pay another tenner to watch the sequel in a year’s time?…
Probably.
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