REVIEW:
Wicked is an enjoyable musical. It’s a sort of prequel to the Wizard of Oz, written many decades after that classic movie was made. And this prequel does not follow Dorothy, the protagonist from that film, at all. Instead, it is all about the witches. Specifically the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch. It’s kind of funny because they were both main character in the Wizard of Oz, but there was also a third witch, killed at the beginning, who is in this movie, but hardly a main character like those other two. That witch would be the Wicked Witch of the East, who is the sister of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Wicked is about the college years for these girls. They go to a school for learning magic. In that sense, it is a little like Harry Potter. Especially when you consider that the Wicked Witch of the West (the protagonist of the film,) is the only one at the school who has real powers, kind of like how Harry was so much more powerful and advanced than any of the other students at Hogwarts. Wicked uses the college years idea to tell a story about friendship and about some corruption going on beneath the surface.
That corruption story really only starts getting going about halfway through the film, when a talking goat, who is their professor, is taken away and locked up. It turns out somebody doesn’t want animals to talk anymore, and all talking animals are suddenly being arrested. There’s definitely a Nazi Germany feel to this subplot about the animals, with neighbors being rounded up and taken away.
The musical numbers are fun, but they are also too long. In fact, the movie as a whole is too long. The Easter egg nods to the Wizard of Oz are great, and they really get going in the final acts of this movie when we meet the wizard (played by the great Jeff Goldblum,) but even still, by that point we are starting to feel the movies length. Some movies are overly long so that they can attempt to prove to the audience that there needed to be more sequels made. That was certainly the case with the Hobbit movies, where one book was not only turned into three movies, but all three movies for at least two and a half hours long. And it felt like filler and a waste of time. Wicked isn’t quite in the same category as that, but there is a sequel coming, and with that in mind, it would have been nice if this movie had been two hours long or maybe even shorter. Leave us wanting more. Trim the fat. Other than the length and non-willingness to keep the pace tight, this is a pretty good movie. It’s colorful and fun in all the right ways.