Zlatan Hu.’s review published on Letterboxd:
If you are primarily interested in movies without being a fan of the original Wicked musical or this particular IP, I would take these somewhat strangely overwhelming positive reactions with a grain of salt. It's nice to see people enthusiastic about big Hollywood extravaganza but this is far, far, very far away from a masterpiece which is so forcefully implied by many major media outlets. First of all, this being Part 1 with a running time of 160 minutes while the whole original musical wasn't much longer than that, tells you enough about the intentions and corporate machinery behind this project.
The positive side besides perhaps 2-3 musical numbers being fun and charming are the performances from Cynthia Orivo and Ariana Grande. They have nice chemistry together and they are obviously great singers. Jonathan Bailey also has fun screen presence and I definitely wanted to see a bit more of him. Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum aren't doing that much here, typical paycheck gigs, no more and no less.
Story is fine, I guess. It has super basic messages about acceptance, being true to yourself, unexpected friendships, standing up and, and... really basic stuff without much ambiguity to it. However, the pacing is atrocious, film dragged at times and an obnoxiously pedestrian editing didn't help at all. After some time, I simply wanted it to end - again, this is Part 1, so spoilers - it won't end until November 2025.
And how are the visuals? This is one of the worst looking big studio movies I have seen in a very long time - think Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland mixed with MCU bland colour grading and horrendous lighting that makes everything artificial, soulless and flat. It's astonishing how even the prettiest practical sets can be demolished with post-production in wrong hands. This is a movie where visual components are supposed to be crucial, it should create that cinematic and magical sense of wonder - remember beautiful Technicolour vibrancy in 1939s Wizard of Oz? Well, that's replaced with the ugliest colour palette you can find in modern film.
Wicked (Part 1!) will be a hit, it's tailored to be, forced into being the ultimate crowd pleaser but the fact that such an unimaginative and borderline lazy and toothless filmmaking is so highly praised, called even a MASTERPIECE, that's the reason why mainstream film industry isn't about art, creativity or originality anymore, it's almost exclusively about corporations creating marketing juggernauts and pleasing the target audience with the safest and the most basic content without the ounce of artistic instincts that are usually needed to mold motion pictures into art. Just like Sir Scorsese once commented on these huge riskless crowd-pleasing corporate events, this is not cinema, this is something else.
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