2025
PG
Musical
Living in exile, misunderstood witch Elphaba must continue her fight for the truth — and make good with estranged friend Glinda — to save all of Oz.
Wicked: For Good is a movie I had mixed feelings about. From the start, with the first movie, I have wondered why they needed to stretch out the show over two movies. In part one I wasn't too concerned. There were some unnecessary 'filler' scenes, but they didn't drag too much. However, it didn't work quite as well in part two, where there were several moments I even decided to fast forward through as they were dragging and didn't capture my interest. This included the two new songs, neither of which added anything to my mind and only slowed down the pacing. As in part one, I wasn't inspired by Ariana Grande's performance. Yes, she hits all the notes, but her singing has no nuance or emotion; her voice has no vocal colour and her diction in the upper range is not great. Cynthia Erivo is better. Her voice shows more contrast in her songs. Two moments I had been looking forward to were 'As Long As You're Mine' and 'No Good Deed', as they are favourite songs of mine from the show. But I was left disappointed. 'As Long As You're Mine' opened with Elphaba wandering around away from Fiyero, so the words lacked the intensity and passion you get from them kneeling opposite each other, actually touching, on a bare stage in the show. How can she sing 'hold me too tight' when she has her back to him in another part of the room? 'No Good Deed' was a bit better, but again, much of the emotional intensity of the song is lost because of all the distracting special effects and action drawing the viewer's attention away from the lyrics and the performance. To say something positive to end, the special effects were good, as was the choreography in scenes with dancing/movement, and I am, as a huge musical theatre fan, of course happy to see more musical movies being made again and hope the success of this one will inspire more. For me, these two movies were not bad by any means, but there were some things that didn't really work for me. I am giving this one 4 stars. If you can't see the stage production, these films are a good alternative, but I do think the show works better on stage because the emotion of the songs comes across more intensely without distracting special effects and set pieces in the way.
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