Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked: For Good” features all the soaring heights and pesky warts that plague the hit Broadway musical it is based on; for ill and for good. The widely anticipated follow-up to “Wicked: Part One,” “For Good” picks up after our literal year-long intermission to find Glinda the Good and Elphaba the Green at opposing ends of a racial cleansing spearheaded by a populist con-artist with a lust for flair and unquestioning adoration. The film, unlike its predecessor, is much more interested in playing off “The Wizard of Oz” itself but does so with a frustrating flippancy, slavishly devoting itself to introducing not just WHY Dorothy flew from Kansas to land house-first onto a witch rocking great footwear, but the origins of her companions: Scarecrow, Woodsman, and the Lion, through a “yada yada” storytelling style that can be infuriating, though is seemingly faithful to it’s original stage production. The reason for showing up, though, is the roller coaster relationship between Cynthia Eriva as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, displaying performances incendiary enough to make one’s misgivings about the frazzled mess of this revisionist retelling mostly vanish into thin air.
Set five years after Elphaba defied gravity, stole the Wizard’s magical book ‘The Grimmerie’, and let out the battle cry heard from Munchkinland to the Deadly Desert (that’s for you “Return To Oz” heads out there), the animals who once lived as equal citizens in Oz have begun to be rounded up and forced into manual labor at the sharp edge of a slave driver’s whip. As the film opens, a group of imprisoned oxen is laboring to build the Wizard’s Big Beautiful Yellow Brick Road; othered for being different, yet burdened with building this gaudy symbol of their own oppression. Elphaba, as an aerial guerrilla liberator, swoops through the sky on her broomstick to free the animals in the hopes that resistance will breed revolution against the charlatan in his olive tower. Meanwhile, Glinda is tasked by the regime to be the face of “goodness,” making public appearances in a flying bubble hover craft, and charged with assuring Ozians that the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum in full sleazy showman mode) has their best interests at heart in his battle against the vicious enemy from above. While Glinda knows that Elphaba means well and shares these misgivings with Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), her fiancé and Captain of the Wizard Guard, she cannot remove herself from the validation weaponized against her from the fawning limelight she has treasured and cultivated her entire life. Fiyero, who is not-so-secretly in love with Elphaba, is desperate to find her before another of his guards, or the Wizard’s army of flying monkeys, gets lucky and eradicates her from the sky. As all yellow roads lead to the Emerald City, all their good intentions inevitably lead to a catastrophe, as the fate of every animal, person, or munchkin in Oz hangs in balance. Meanwhile, a house from a faraway land, randomly discarded by a wayward twister, falls from the sky and kick-starts a chain of events that we know will bring about the end of “The Wicked Witch of the West.”
While this half of the musical doesn’t have the same propulsive pep that the first one does, its songs feature a yearning earnestness that is catching, if sometimes a bit overdone. Long gone is the playful banter of “Loathing” or the delightfully bubble gum “Popular.” in favor of the thunderous “No Good Deed” and the heartbreaking “I Couldn’t Be Happier.” Two additional songs were written for the film, one a call to arms from Elphaba to the displaced animals of Oz, “No Place Like Home,” the other a mournful ballad of self-discovery by Glinda, “The Girl in the Bubble.” While “Bubble” features some of the most inventive filmmaking of either film, utilizing mirrors in clever and meaningful ways, “Home” is the only song that feels out of place, though its heart certainly is in the right one. A song written in collaboration with Erivo, the lyrics show Elphaba questioning why she would fight for Oz, a land that has never shown her anything but revulsion. She concludes that home is an idea, and it is worth fighting for even when evil is at the gates. “Why should a land have so much meaning when dark times befall it?” Erivo sings. “It’s only land, made of dirt and rock and loam. It’s just a place that’s familiar, and “home”‘s just what we call it. But there’s no place like home.” It’s a song of hopeful protest, one that could be easily raised in defiance of the fascist society we are currently flushing headfirst into with only a few words replaced, yet it’s topical nature sadly sticks out and feels like it was mostly written to be sung at the Academy Awards. The best scene in the movie is the duet “For Good”, sung by Elphaba and Glinda mere moments before little Dorothy gets the bright idea to splash her green captor in the face with a pail of water. As if in response to Director Jon M. Chu’s choices for the finale of “Part One,” where the titanic “Defying Gravity” is almost cut down at the knees by overwrought CGI flying and burdensom task of being the emotional climax of an entire film as opposed to a single act of a musical, the duet “For Good” plays out in long, meaningful two shots, Erivo and Grande baring their souls to one another with a yearning that feels more real than the artifice of the movie itself. It’s a scene that makes the nearly six hours of Oz-ian nonsense feel worth it, the culmination of a year-long cinematic journey that feels earned and magical.
Can we talk about “The Wizard of Oz” of it all? I’m surely a fan of revisionist stories; reframing the narrative from the perspective of “the wickedest witch that ever was” is certainly effective, and there’s been no better time than now to rage against the despotic nature of bigoted demagogues who cower behind cheap spectacle to mask their cruelty. But if you’re going to do it, just do it. If you’re going to do Dorothy, cast a human person to be her; please don’t make her some weird combination of shadow, weird CGI mush, and one laugh-inducing POV shot that looks as if the Kansas farm girl was gifted a GoPro from Auntie Em. The Tin Woodsman and The Cowardly Lion get some space in the film, though limited, but at least they’re in the mix. It’s the Scarecrow that I’ve got the biggest bone to pick with, and in fairness, it’s something that has always annoyed me about the show as well. His origin makes little sense when taken in the totality of Dorothy’s parallel, comparatively light movie, which takes place while Armagaddon rages across Oz. How is there enough time for her to meet these two body horror atrocities and a wimp of a lion by the time Elphaba collects her flying monkeys and sets up shop in a creepy castle? Shouldn’t Dorothy have met Elphaba at some point? Why is Toto on a leash? Admittedly, this is my personal soapbox and one I’d be happy to yell about at Thanksgiving over stuffing and deviled eggs. At least the filmmakers were brave enough to give the pseudo Scarecrow a gun, much like his cinematic forefather. He may be just a muffin with his head all full of stuffin’, but that boy is packing heat, and you love to see it.
Ranting and raving aside, “Wicked: For Good” gives what is advertised: a sweeping, colorful conclusion to a relationship we’ve grown to care about, with the songs that several generations of theater goers have come to love, and a few moments of true heartfelt catharsis. For all my griping about Chu’s aversion to color or shadow in “Part One,” “For Good” has a few more visual tricks up its sleeve; the aforementioned “Bubble” scene being a particular high point. So far as adaptations of Broadway musicals go, this is easily one of the better ones, its faults mostly burned away by the blisteringly bright alchemy of Erivo and Grande whenever they share the screen. While their gonzo press tours may one day be forgotten, though we might hold space for them in our hearts, movies last forever, and the pair have cemented themselves in the cinematic legacy of these iconic characters for good.
“Wicked: For Good” is a grand time at the theater, but as I respectfully requested a year ago, please save the singing for the inevitable sing-along version sure to hit theaters in several months.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Wicked: For Good” is playing at The Broad Theater, Prytania Uptown and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
