- Wicked: For Good
- Directed by: Jon M. Chu
- Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey
- Musical/Fantasy | PG | 2 hr 18 min
2 stars
By Reed Ripley
Coming off last year’s Wicked phenomenon, Wicked: For Good was in prime position to take over the culture over the holiday season and even springboard into an Oscars campaign in the spring. While that may still pan out thanks to sheer marketing force of will, the film struggles immensely with the same Act II problems that plague its predecessor stage production, and it leads to a slow, stiff watch that never fulfills its promise to defy gravity.
In this second half of the story, Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, lives in exile in the Ozian forest, while Glinda resides at the palace in Emerald City, reveling in the perks of fame and popularity. As an angry mob rises against Elphaba, she must find how to transform herself for good.
Wicked: For Good doesn’t work for the same broad reason 2024’s Wicked worked so well—a stubborn refusal to do anything but adapt the stage production note-for-note. That’s perfectly okay when you have songs like “What Is This Feeling?”, “Popular,” and of course, “Defying Gravity,” and performers like Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande to execute them, but when those bangers fall away to a much more narrative-driven second act, the momentum just evaporates.
It’s easy to excuse those issues in the stage production, where Act II is only around an hour long and the live performances are still engaging enough to hold attention, but Wicked: For Good runs a whopping two hours, even after deducting the end credits, and it drags almost unbearably. I say “almost” because Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande (reprising their roles as Glinda and Elphaba, respectively) are still excellent performers and are almost worth the price of admission themselves, but it’s not enough to save things.
It’s incredibly frustrating because it’s not as if Wicked’s Act II problems were a mystery—we’re now in the production’s 23rd year on Broadway, and famously, no one talks about Act II because all the juice is in Act I, and again, Act II hurriedly concludes, which gets people out of the theater and talking about “Defying Gravity.” Wicked: For Good had an excellent opportunity to fix those problems, but instead, it doubled down on them.
Outside Erivo’s and Grande’s performances, there’s simply not much to recommend with Wicked: For Good. The other performances are forced and awkward, the animal segregation/slavery storyline doesn’t work because the film doesn’t give us any animal characters to care about, and the film’s attempts at political commentary come off as surface-level and very much on-the-nose. Great songs and set pieces could have saved things, but they’re just not there. There are plenty of bells and whistles that are desperately trying to fill that gap, but much like its sham Wonderful Wizard, Wicked: For Good’s parlor tricks fade away at the slightest pull of a curtain.
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