When I reviewed the first Wicked movie, I led off by wondering why the Broadway musical had been split into two parts for the film version. Now, after watching Wicked: For Good, I get it. As a stand-alone movie, it’s not as good as the first one, but as a conclusion to the saga of a good witch and a wicked one, it’s a roaring success. Fans of movie musicals (me!) needed a multi-part epic to match the Lord of the Rings films and other serialized blockbusters. Wicked is that series, and with its trappings of fantasy and magic, it stands tall next to its fellow franchises about superheroes and mythic warriors. I see it clearly now. We’re lucky to have it.
The second film picks up with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) a fugitive from Oz’ flying monkeys. Initially starting out in charge of the manhunt, Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) becomes engaged to marry Glinda (Ariana Grande), which is a surprise to him. Because he’s actually in love with Elphaba, he defects to the other side and joins her on the run, while Glinda finds her popularity being used by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) to prop up their regime.
This whole film is a study in good intentions gone awry, as the lion cub rescued by Elphaba and Fiyero in the first movie grows up into the Cowardly Lion (voiced by Colman Domingo), who resents his rescuers for taking him away from his parents. The flying monkeys are the result of a magic spell by Elphaba that went wrong, and something similar happens when she tries to protect Fiyero after he falls into the hands of Oz’ soldiers.
The entire subplot involving Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and the Munchkin Boq (Ethan Slater) is quite horrifying even as it gives depth to a couple of characters who didn’t receive much play in the first film. She tries to win the Munchkin’s love by enslaving him and then by casting her own botched love spell that has devastating consequences for both of them. The young cast all project an air of “how did it all come to this?”, and the brief flashbacks to the happier times depicted in the first film are piercing because of that.
Structurally, the second film’s problem is that all the show’s best songs were in the first one. The visuals are proportionally less memorable as well, though director Jon M. Chu executes some neat tracks into and out of mirrored surfaces during Glinda’s song “The Girl in the Bubble,” one of two songs newly written for the movie by songwriter Stephen Schwartz. The Wizard’s number “Wonderful” is a clever little bit of manipulation as he briefly coaxes Elphaba onto his side, but the musical highlight is the climactic duet “For Good” as our heroines ponder how their frenemyship has altered them.
Partitioning the movies this way makes this second film into a showcase for Grande as much as the first one was for Erivo. For Good does not spotlight her singing so much (though she’s still hitting clean high C’s here) as her performance of a difficult role. The camera lingers on her closeup as Glinda betrays her best friend in a particularly detestable way and realizes how low she has sunk. It takes a great deal to redeem a character after that, but when Glinda wrests control of Oz from her corrupt mentors, it’s all due to Grande exerting her presence over a couple of actors who are markedly taller than her.
The character who started out as a girl who pretended to be good in order to become popular ends up determined to use her popularity to do good. Glinda doesn’t get to that place if she doesn’t meet Elphaba and see the injustice that she suffers, and the way the two films dramatize how she learns to be a good person is deeply moving. Wicked didn’t need to be as thoughtful as all this to draw in big crowds at the multiplex. It is, though, and that’s worth a few words of praise over the Thanksgiving table.
<blockquote class="td_quote_box td_box_left">Wicked: For Good
Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Directed by Jon M. Chu. Written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, based on Holzman’s musical libretto and Gregory Maguire’s novel. Rated PG.
