WICKED: FOR GOOD Review: Follow-Up To Last Year's Smash Hit Fails To Justify Its Running Time

When studio executives, driven by commercial and not artistic concerns, decide to expand an adaptation of a beloved, long-running Broadway musical, the results will inevitably look and, more importantly, sound like Jon M. Chu’s (Crazy Rich Asians, Now You See Me 2, In the Heights) Wicked and Wicked: For Good, the latter arriving in multiplexes a year after its predecessor earned a staggering three quarters of a billion dollars at the global box office. 

 

On the Broadway stage, Wicked, the 2003 Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 bestselling fantasy novel, ran just under three hours, including an obligatory intermission. On film, the two-part adaptation runs closer to an unwarranted, over-indulgent five hours, perfect, perhaps, for super-fans eager to slip into Chu’s Nouveau/Art Deco-inspired version of an overly digitized Oz, but unjustifiable to — and for – everyone else who wouldn’t consider themselves anything but casual fans.

 

Although Wicked: For Good avoids a recap of part I, it still meanders from one plot point to another, serving up unnecessary flashbacks to Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) respective and collective pasts before reminding audiences of the current status quo: Elphaba, a naturally gifted witch, turned into an outcast and feared villain while a rebranded “Glinda the Good,” allied with both the not-so-Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), a charlatan, conman, and grifter who’s propagandized and mainupulated his way into wealth, influence, and power over Oz and its citizens, and Madame Morrible (Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh), the wizard’s ally and next to Elphaba, the most powerful witch in Oz. 

 

Revisiting the first part’s preoccupation with paralleling real-world politics, Wicked: For Good opens with a stark reminder of the wizard’s cruelty to Oz’s lower animals: Exhausted, buffalo-like “beasts of burdens” pulling brick-laying contraptions for the wizard’s yellow-brick road. (In this iteration, it's environmentally unfriendly too.)  Almost immediately, A broomstick-riding Elphaba, demonized and dehumanized as the “Wicked Witch of the West,” descends on the road crew from the skies, easily thwarting their efforts to unseat her and freeing the buffalo-like animals in the process. 

 

Elphaba still identifies herself as an animal rights activist, a friend and ally to Oz's non-human inhabitants. With persecution and oppression a near constant, however, for the animal population, especially the sentient, self-aware, talking animals, she finds herself without allies, alone to face the wizard, his loyal minions, and the disinformed, misinformed populace that’s conveniently turned Elphaba into the “other,” all but allowing the wizard to rule Oz with a velvet glove and a stack of decrees, the latter signed by Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), Oz’s latest/newest governor. 

 

In this telling, not even the Munchkins in Munchkinland are immune from persecution, in part due to Nessarose’s resentment towards Glinda and her hold on Boq’s (Ethan Slater) heart. For her part, Glinda’s heart belongs to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), but Fiyero’s heart belongs to Elphaba, leaving everyone out of sorts, unhappy, and all-too-willing to lead with their worst instincts and ignoring their better selves, including Glinda, who turns her anger, frustration, and disappointment with Fiyero’s confession against Elphaba, solidifying her alliance with the wizard and Madame Morrible. 

 

As some hearts break, other hearts mend, if only temporarily, while the grander plot pitting Elphaba against the wizard and Madame Morrible plays out, albeit at a non-urgent pace. That plot dovetails with the familiar story of a farm girl from Kansas (here seen mostly from behind, in silhouette, or at a distance), the Cowardly Lion (voiced by Colman Domingo), the Scarecrow (no spoilers), and, of course, the Tin Man (same regarding spoilers). The ultimate goal for Dorothy and her crew remains the same: Retrieving Elphaba’s broomstick in exchange for four wishes (Dorothy’s return to Kansas, the Scarecrow’s lack of brainpower, and so forth). 

 

Dorothy’s over-familiar, near-mythic story, of course, remains secondary to Elphaba and Glinda’s intertwined story, their fraught relationship, the onetime foes turned best friends forever, their friendship almost irrevocably broken over Fiyero, Glinda’s dubious alliance with the wizard and Madame Morrible, ostensibly to do “good” in a system she can’t control, ultimately whether Glinda, foregrounded here like Elphaba received in part I, can grow beyond her privileged, upper-class background, natural naivete and self-absorption, and the magical powers she’s always coveted, never had, but pretended to have. 

 

Despite Erivo and Grande once again delivering knock-out, powerhouse performances as Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, the songs rarely rise to the full extent of their skills or talents. There’s nothing like the lungs-out “Defying Gravity,” Part I’s showstopping conclusion or the mid-film earworm-worthy “Popular” either. Only “No Good Deed” (Elphaba) and “The Girl in the Bubble” (Glinda) come close to the emotional resonance of Part I’s superior songbook. Unfortunately, it’s not very close at all.

 

Wicked: For Good, while thankfully leaner than Part I's two-hour, 40-minute run time, remains a perfect example of a studio-mandated decision to split an otherwise single story into two, sporadically satisfying parts (aka “The Harry Potter Syndrome”). As a result, this can — and too often does — lead to endlessly padded, extraneous scenes, stop-start narrative momentum, and musical numbers that simultaneously feel overstuffed and underdeveloped. Each, in turn, doubles as an example of Wicked: For Good's core issue, a combined five-hour running time dictated by commerce and not art.

 

Wicked: For Good opens Friday, November 21, only in movie theaters, via Universal Pictures.