Wicked: Part 1

Wicked: Part 1 is great, but definitely not perfect. My issues weirdly surround the songs. Having listened to the original cast album, there are songs that I like and others that I don’t care about. In the movie, I loved the treatment of the songs that I didn’t like, such as Something Bad and A Sentimental Man. Having these songs sung in a new context gives them more emotion here than in the play. On the other hand, Popular and Dancing Through Life just didn’t have the fun I remember from the play. Popular misses a punchline badly, and the library dance number for Dancing Through Life should feel more grand in execution. But in the end, the fun and energy of the play is captured in the movie.

Among the leads, Erivo is perhaps the weakest vocally. There’s a great difference between actors who sing and Broadway actors who sing. In The Wizard and I, Erivo just couldn’t deliver the required power. Then again, she simply nails Defying Gravity, making it, along with Chu’s astute direction, the showstopper needed to end the film. Grande is the reincarnation of Kristin Chenoweth, but there were just too many “I’m conceited” jokes, and the gag just lost steam by the end. Grande, though, is a Broadway singer and delivers each of her songs beautifully.

“…Chu and his creative team…figured out how to level up the emotion of the story with the extra bits of drama.”

I’ll end this by saying that Wicked: Part 1 suffers from the same problem that plagues Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Into the Woods: The intimacy on stage can not be recreated on film. The production values blow out the intimate space on stage. Having said that, it looks like Chu and his creative team knew that and figured out how to level up the emotion of the story with the extra bits of drama. All smart moves in the end.

Wicked: Part 1 is an incredible adaptation that captures the core of what fans adore about the stage musical while offering its own cinematic flourishes. Despite a few pacing hiccups, Jon M. Chu’s direction and the cast’s passionate performances create a magical journey worth experiencing. For fans of the Broadway show, this is a delightful return to Oz, and for those who can’t afford Broadway prices, it’s a spellbinding invitation to the story behind the scenes of The Wizard of Oz.