WICKED: PART I starts near the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, felled by a well-aimed bucket of water. The celebration commences. Glinda the Good Witch (Ariana Grande, DON’T LOOK UP) arrives in her bubble to address the crowd, and somebody asks her if she knew that dead lady. So she tells us (part one of) the story of her days as the college roommate of the would-be wicked witch.

I’m gonna start this review with a flash forward too. I thought this movie was okay. I didn’t hate it. I don’t really get it. Stay tuned for details.

I sometimes say I’m not a musicals guy, but really I’m just not a Broadway guy. It’s not as much the “I’m gonna start singing now” format as it is the specific modern Broadway style of storytelling, tone of melodrama, sense of humor, and especially musical styles that don’t appeal to me. Case in point: huge crossover hit and cultural phenomenon Hamilton (Disney+ version). I swear I tried to watch it with an open mind, but I just don’t know how to stop wincing. It sets off all my too-corny defense systems.

But I’m not hopeless. I loved Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY. I even loved LES MISERABLES! I thought CATS was an amusing enough abomination against God. So there’s always a possibility of winning me over. WICKED PART I’s trailers did it no favors, but word was almost universally positive, and I have respect for director Jon M. Chu (G.I. JOE: RETALIATION) because he’s from the streets (specifically STEP UP 2 THE STREETS). So I bit the bullet, paid the twenty bucks for VOD and attempted to ease on down the road.

As you may know, WICKED PART I is an adaptation of the first act of a blockbuster Broadway musical, itself based on a popular book by Gregory Maguire, itself a riff on the WIZARD OF OZ movie, itself a musical based on the works of L. Frank Baum (whose name I didn’t spot on the credits if WICKED). I think the popularity of the musical (or maybe the book?) inspired a wave of villainess’-p.o.v.-reconsidered works (or even villain – see DRACULA UNTOLD), so I’ll give this a pass for the premise not feeling all that novel. Obviously the phenomenon of women being unfairly demonized and not understood until it’s too late continues to be relevant. Furthermore, this version has themes about the rise of fascism and the treachery of insincere allies that are very trenchant. So intellectually I sorta get why it’s such a hit.

It stars Cynthia Erivo (WIDOWS) as the future Wicked Witch of the West, whose name here is Elphaba Thropp. She was born with green skin, causing much ridicule, and she’s used to dealing with that, but while helping her younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) move into the elite sorcery college Shiz University (just go with it) she has a telekinetic outburst that inspires dean Madame Morrible (Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh, BABYLON A.D.) to take her on as a private student, providing housing by coercing kiss-ass popular girl Galinda (as Glinda was known in college) into sharing her private residence. But she’s basically the weird goth roommate to the head cheerleader, and is forced to live in her closet.

I couldn’t tell you much about pop star Ariana Size L, but between some physical humor, the creepy hollowness of the character’s performative friendliness, and the odd waifish quality she already embodies, I think she’s pretty funny here. I knew WICKED would be a defense of the wicked witch; I did not know it would be such a brutal takedown of Glinda the Good Witch. You thought she just had a goofy, old-timey fairy thing going, but according to this she’s a vacuous phony, a pampered, self-centered wannabe, a coat-tail riding usurper and instant ship-abandoner. Toward the end there finally seems to be some genuine admiration between the two roommates, which makes her lack of solidarity even worse.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Elphaba never dreamed of witchdom, but she accepts Morrible’s offer, hoping it could help her meet the Wizard of Oz and get him to cure her of greenness. I think there’s also part of her that feels good about being recognized for a talent. Within the story the green skin is more of a symbol for disability than for race, but there is a prejudice against her for her skin color, so I think it adds something that they cast a great Broadway actress who happens to be Black. I believe on stage it was more in the tradition of those stories where being an alien or having mutant powers stands in for being a minority, without having to actually cast any minorities. Having a Black woman in the role gives us something beyond girl power when she has to come into every situation suspicious of how people will see her, hold her head up extra high, and achieve on a higher level in her magical business. (At the same time, it is a diverse cast, and though the character of Nessarose is always in a wheelchair, Bode is the first actual wheelchair user to play her.)

There is romance. Prince Fiyero Tigelaar of Winkie Country (Jonathan Bailey, FERRARI [tv movie]) is a heartthrob transfer student who flirts with Elphaba, but she rejects him so he settles with Galinda. A munchkin named Boq Woodsman (Ethan Slater, Joel Grey in Fosse/Verdon) has been friend-zoned by Galinda, so he settles with Nessarose.

There’s some prequely stuff here. The monkeys get their wings (body horror style), the brick road gets its colorway, a lion cub lacks bravery. We all know Oz is a place where a lion can join you on your journey, so it’s kinda fun that there’s a talking goat professor at the school (voice of Peter Dinklage, THE THICKET) – realistic cg, not guy in makeup. There is a rash of anti-animal biotry on campus, culminating in the firing of the professor and class demonstration of caging animals. Elphaba speaks up, but no one else does. It’s all very Harry Potterish, but also feels accurate to this moment in history in a way that’s effective. Galinda and Fiyero were starting to seem like they might actually be nice people, but it turns out they’re not the type you can count on to take a stand when it counts. Whelp.

Though bummed out by the rise of fascism, Elphaba does at least get an opportunity to travel to the Emerald City and meet the wizard (Jeff Goldblum, HOTEL ARTEMIS), both in giant mechanical head form and FTF, and she’s such a stand up lady that she brings superfan Glinda with her. (At this point she has altered her name to how the talking goat once mispronounced it, a symbolic gesture of support in lieu of action.)

Elphaba decides to stop worrying about being green and ask the wizard to help the cause of animal rights instead. But shit goes south, she steals the Necronomicon or whatever, flies on a broom, sings her biggest hit, end part I.

I confess I don’t know what the big deal is about “Defying Gravity.” I had seen it described in breathless prose like one of the great works of 21st century music, so I figured what I’d heard of it must seem better in context. But… you know. It’s another one of those types of songs. She flies at the end. I mean, she already was flying but I guess she does it better after the song. I heard Chu interviewed by Sean Levy on the Director’s Guild podcast and Levy was about ready to give Chu ten Nobel Peace Prizes for coming up with the part where she seems like she’s flying but then she plummets off screen, and there’s a beat and I guess she must be dead but– oh no, wait! She caught herself! Thank God! And she zooms back up! SHE CAN FLY!

(The exact beat you expect if you’ve seen any movie with flying, ever.)

That Levy considers that so unprecedented may explain a thing or two about his filmography, but to be fair he’s also obviously coming from the background of loving Broadway musicals in general, and Wicked in particular, as is Chu. And that interview is enlightening in understanding the amount of work that goes into planning, rehearsing and filming every moment of a big musical like this, plus expanding the stage story and the mythology of all these movies and books into his cinematic interpretation. Chu is hugely passionate about it all but more effective, in my opinion, at the musical part. As far as creating a cohesive fantasy world he’s throwing alot of different things in alot of different directions and some of them are landing in the bushes. It doesn’t feel to me like he has that much of a take on Oz, like RETURN TO OZ did. It’s more just mixing up some of the famous imagery, some generic fairy tale shit and some talking animals.

But who am I fooling? If you put in a part where they go to a speakeasy and there are animals playing instruments like the octopus drummer in AQUAMAN, I’m gonna kind of enjoy it, even if it’s stupid. Especially if it’s stupid.

There are some real HOBBIT trilogy shenanigans going on here, because 160 (one-hundred-and-sixty) minutes is reportedly longer than the entire stage musical, and we’ve gotta wait for a whole other movie to cover the rest. (Don’t worry, it’s a big hit so it won’t be a Ralph Bakshi’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS or a THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT: PART 3 OF 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER type situation). I’d heard it stands as a complete story on its own, which I sort of get. This is how she became “wicked” I guess. The trouble with that is I’m not sure what I need part two for. To find out why water melts her, I guess. And why she hates dogs so much. And how her nice sister in the wheelchair gets flattened and everybody celebrates. What the fuck, Oz!? You guys are monsters.

WICKED: PART I is written by Winnie Holzman (writer of the stage version and creator of My So-Called Life) and Dana Fox (COUPLES RETREAT, CRUELLA), songs and score by Stephen Schwartz (original stage version, POCAHONTAS, ENCHANTED), new score by John Powell (FACE/OFF).

Sorry to journey into the kingdom of hot takes and/or bad taste here, but I honestly got more out of Fox’s earlier movie CRUELLA, not to mention the earlier-than-that MALEFICENT – movies I suspect wouldn’t exist without the popularity of the Wicked musical and/or book. The latter I caught up with recently, never reviewed it but it’s a pretty fun, ludicrous riff on the idea of painting the ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS dognapper as a talented misfit who got screwed over. What stuck with me most is the visual style, and unfortunately WICKED just can’t hang in that company. I guarantee you Tim Burton or Gore Verbinski would’ve made Oz look stunning, and that alone might’ve been enough to win me over. But “better looking than I expected from the trailers” didn’t cut it for me.

Chu is working with production designer Nathan Crowley, a veteran of eight Christopher Nolan movies plus JOHN CARTER and WONKA. Costume designer Paul Tazewell has been to Oz before – he did THE WIZ LIVE!. Director of photography Alice Brooks did Chu’s LXD web series as well as DANCE CAMP, IN THE HEIGHTS and tick, tick… BOOM!, and I’m sure that knowing how to move the camera during dance sequences is crucial to a movie like this. All of these are talented people, so I put it on Chu that their work doesn’t meld into something that ranks high in the century-plus of cool looking Oz movies.

But that’s not what most people are looking for here. They’re looking for the musical numbers, and they seem to have loved those. This review might only be relevant to others like me looking in curiously from the outside.

So here we are where we started. The intended audience for this seems to love it. I don’t fully understand what they see in it, but it’s certainly more watchable than the bullshit I pictured when I saw the trailer. So take that for what it’s worth. End of part I. To be continued. Or maybe not if part two doesn’t get nominated for best picture. I’m busy sometimes.

p.s. If the wicked witch was actually cool and just got fucked over by a prejudiced society, is that also true of her waking world counterpart, Dorothy’s mean neighbor Miss Gulch? Has there been any scholarship on this?