Director Jon M. Chu’s hat trick seemed to be nimbly splitting a Broadway musical’s two acts into a double whammy of film spectaculars. Trouble is, the first film was packed with confectionary creativity and a veritable bandstand of bops, so stretching this half adaptation into a sprawling opus simply enhanced the delight. The second installment is as empty as the antagonist wizard’s promises, padding a paltry batch of dirges and a virtually choreography-free display with most of the characters distant, deceitful and depressed. So it may bill itself as Wicked: For Good (C+), but it’s definitely not nearly as good. Much of the sequel replaces its signature girl power with Dynasty-style lady slaps, shoulder pads, back-biting, in-fighting and wedding cliffhangers. The witches and lovers who were once dancing through life and defying gravity seem generally bored this time around. Even the CGI animals are pretty much over the bull-shiz. Both Ariana Grande’s Glinda and Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba get new Stephen Schwartz songs which are showstoppers only in the way they stop the film dead in its tracks (Erivo doesn’t even get to finish her subpar number). Much time has passed since the origin story for this origin story, and a bunch of characters seem to now be behaving badly to help fill in the nightmarish narrative between the witches’ time at school and Dorothy’s house dropping into the scene. The formerly spry Jonathan Bailey gets little to do this time around; and Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum are dreadful double-threats in both the acting and singing departments as a pair of insipid villains. The Fiyero/Elpheba pop anthem “As Long as You’re Mine” and the Glinda/Elphaba ballad “For Good” are the only good musical numbers in the mix. Those who haven’t seen the stage show may enjoy some of the surprising backstories to the yellow brick roadies, but most of the magic goes up in smoke. Grande makes the most of her character in what is otherwise a much more grim fairy tale this time around.
My one-minute FilmThirst TikTok reaction: