“Wicked: For Good,” the highly anticipated second act to last year’s “Wicked,” has finally hit the big screen, and opinions have come back mixed.
While the adaptation is pretty faithful to the original, there were a few changes and additions made. Two of which were brand new songs, “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble,” written by the composer of the Broadway musical, Stephen Schwartz.
While I thought “No Place Like Home” added a very human element to Elphaba (the wicked witch) that was otherwise missing in the beginning of Act Two, I did not particularly enjoy “The Girl in the Bubble.” It was a nice song on its own, but it felt unnecessary compared to the rest of the movie’s second half. It aims to get across a similar point to one of the show’s opening songs, “Thank Goodness / I Couldn’t be Happier,” but is far more heavy-handed.
Instead of giving Glinda another song, I think it would have been much more effective to give a song to the character Fiyero, the film’s love interest. While he is not as big of a character as Elphaba or Glinda, he contributes heavily to the plot and still has no song of his own outside of Act One.
Aside from changes made to the music, my biggest note has to be the casting. One of the film’s actresses, Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible), delivered a performance that I was far from impressed by. While she displayed great acting skills, she had a sub-par musical performance. When making a movie musical, the cast’s musical ability has to be just as good as their acting, and unfortunately that wasn’t the case for Yeoh. When the team has to go as far as cutting out entire verses because an actress can’t sing, it might be a sign that that wasn’t the right casting choice.
A critique a lot of people had with the movie was its pacing and plot holes, but I personally did not find a problem with it. The second act of “Wicked” on Broadway is notorious for such problems, and in comparison, I feel that “Wicked: For Good” did a great job of patching that up.
I’ve always been quite fond of Jon M. Chu as a director, and this film did not disappoint. “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good” have really brought the spotlight back to movie musicals and have done so in such a beautiful way. It’s an entertaining and moving movie, and I will definitely be seeing it again.
