“Wicked” (2024) Review
Written by Victor DeBonis
Movies, such as “Wicked” are rare as gold.
It’s a live-action musical, and it’s handled with the utmost passion and craftsmanship.
Director Jon M. Chu, who helmed the superb musical film from 2021 titled “In the Heights” presents exceptional grandeur and overwhelming heart for this story through guiding his performers and others working on this movie down the correct path and with a powerful vision and sincerity. The first chapter of this two-part cinematic story contains its fair share of humor, sadness, hopefulness, and joy, and the talented filmmaker behind this film has done exceptional work with staging elaborate musical sequences, providing rich, colorful visuals, and guiding his actors and dancers with sharp precision to give the charm or sensitivity that brings wonder to this story.
Similar to Denis Villanueve being chosen for “Dune” and Sam Raimi being chosen for his version of “Spider Man” this is a situation of a gifted filmmaker being provided with the perfect type of material for his talents and creating an incredible, cinematic work that arguably nobody else could’ve done better justice to.
Chu has done marvelous work here with this movie and should feel proud.
“Wicked” is a rare gem because its world stands to life from hand-crafted physical sets. Some elements of this film are naturally the work of CGI. The rest of the story, on the other hand, comes from vibrant, green towers, massive, bright-blue and white libraries, and other parts of this world built from real wood and brick. I can’t begin to tell you how much I have missed seeing worlds on the big screen that aren’t completely or mostly the work of computers and are actually physically built sets and stages that one can walk through if they had a chance to.
The movie is special because it contains elaborate singing and dancing sequences that cause me to nod my head and tap my own hands to the beat of their catchy rhythms. The dance choreography is amazing. Impressive blocking is on display with the singers and dancers who are stomping and spinning and somersaulting in the air with purpose. It has been a long time since I have seen a recent live-action musical film brimming with the energy and control shown here. Chu lends his exceptional, visual eye here by presenting longer takes and moments in which the camera will lean and pause to the movements of the performers in front of us and will cleverly yank the audience into the fun because he and the choreographer does everything in his power to visually evoke the character and talent in front of us.
One dancing sequence, a contender for my favorite in the movie with several awe-inspiring ones, is shot with the camera zooming out from a room containing literally rotating and circling ladders and wooden wheels from which the dancers are swooping around and leaping off of. I’ve seen this movie twice in theaters up to this point, and, from both times, I was stunned. I was reflecting in awe about the careful time, planning, and focus that must’ve gone into setting up this sequence alone.
The lead actresses at the center of this epic film are amazing when they’re speaking and when they’re doing their songs. As one might imagine, Ariana Grande does some wonderful singing and has a blast playing around with her musical voice to great effect. Her singing voice rises to impressively high notes that had me raising my eyebrows with real astonishment. Yet, even when she’s not dancing or demonstrating her talent in song, Grande has great timing in her comedic scenes and cleverly leans into the foolishness and attempts to appear wiser than she is. With equal skills, she speaks with pause and the appropriate quietness and look of compassion in her moments in which her conscience catches up with her. I won’t pretend that I’ve always been a fan of some of Grande’s past choices, but I also know that she’s been through her own challenges, based on what I’ve read about her, and it is hard for me to deny the talent from her shown here that balances her comedy and humanity perfectly.
Cynthia Erivo is fantastic as the soon-to-be Wicked Witch, Elphaba. She carries some remarkable singing pipes within herself as well, and she sprints and pauses through her musical moments with skill and an apparent understanding of the jubilance or epiphany needed for the scene. Some of my favorite moments in the movie show Erivo either sharing her wit and connecting to the mistreated or gloriously singing about her greatest hopes and determination to follow her own path. An early scene involves a close-up of her silently glancing downwards as someone she wishes that she could receive love from barely acknowledges her. Quiet hurt and a longing to be accepted are echoed through moments, such as this, and others in which the actress keeps her hurt emotions close to herself at some times and unleashes brief yet powerful flurries of her contained frustrations and pain at other times.
Erivo eloquently taps into the vivid vulnerability and pain and hardened reservations and wisdom of her character. We know where her path ultimately ends with her, but there is never a time in which I don’t feel her pain and don’t root for her to succeed in finding connection and acceptance. Part of this comes from Chu’s direction and the writing from Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, but another huge part of this comes from Erivo’s performance.
The movie is rare because it is a modern-day film in which I was misty-eyed not once, not twice, but multiple times, and most of those times were due to Elphaba’s journey and struggle. And again, this happened from both times in which I saw this on the big screen.
“Wicked: Part One” is a story that resonates with the oddball in me. It is a story that is about the methods through which privilege and people with power who really shouldn’t have it can hurt the vulnerable and others in the process and even ruin them. It is a story that…I like to think and even hope…will resonate with those who are outsiders or are seeking acceptance and belonging or who have felt like Elphaba at one point in their own journey. It is a story that I hope will help those who feel isolated or disconnected not feel alone.
In a year with numerous challenges and that has been frustrating in spots and through these complicating times in which many feel confused or are seeking hope, I can’t think of a better time for this movie to have been released.
I love how it is a story about outsiders trying to find hope and connection.
I love how it is a story about outcasts trying to cope with the harshness of their reality and looking out for others who are isolated or mistreated and whose greatest crime in the eyes of the judgmental and wrongly powerful is being different.
“Wicked” fills me with a joy of the type I usually get if I’m on a sugar rush.
It flows at the center of my soul when a friend of mine says they liked or loved it.
I felt emotions well up within me when I re-listened to its most-beloved number “Defying Gravity” and how much it meant and increasingly still means to me given how different I am from others in my specific ways and my own challenges I have experienced from being different in those ways.
I felt my strong emotions rise when I thought about the meaningfulness this song and the story from which it comes from might mean to others who feel different and how it tells them to keep moving forward and never feel bad for the power and wonder that comes from them being unique in the ways that they are.
I’ve made it clear that musicals are something that I am limited in the extent to which I admire them (or, at least, to the extent to which some admirably love them). Yet, after viewing this cinematic adaptation, it has helped me to pause and fondly reflect on the stories that are musicals on some level, whether it is “The Blues Brothers” or many of my favorite moments/episodes from “Steven Universe” (a series I love, especially for what it has done for the medium of animation) or “Hazbin Hotel” or “Streets of Fire” or, yes, some of my animated favorites from Disney.
“Wicked” is simply wonderful. Please go see it.
A+