Film review: As good as it is long, Wicked (part one) has a way of defying gravitas

The movie only takes us to the end of the play’s first act, with part two still a year away. Still it’s bound to be pop-u-lar

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Wicked — spoiler alert; its full title is Wicked: Part One – is better, brighter and, at two hours and 40 minutes, longer than it has any right to be. Recall that the full Broadway musical on which it’s based is almost the exact same length, and includes a 15-minute intermission.

And yet the movie takes us only to the end of the play’s first act, with a rendition of the showstopper Defying Gravity. I use that adjective literally — it stops the show. Part two opens in another 364 days. With that length of break, this one had better be pop-u-lar.

And I think it will be. Certainly the crowd at a recent preview screening were eating it up, even applauding some of the more showy musical numbers, as if they were at a live performance.

It takes a while to get up to speed, and we’re 30 minutes in before we’re hit with The Wizard and I, one of the show’s most boisterous numbers. But in the meantime we’ve been introduced to most of the major characters.

Cynthia Erivo stars as Elphaba Thropp, her first name derived from Frank L. Baum, who wrote the original Oz books. Her verdigris complexion marks her at the future Wicked Witch of the West. But in these pre-Dorothyrian times she’s merely a misunderstood student at Shiz university, which looks like a cross between Hogwarts and Disney’s It’s a Small World ride. (I wanted its motto to be: It’s the shiz! Or to learn that its previous name was Ryershiz. No such luck.)

Fate (and page 17 of How to Write a Hit Musical) has decreed that Elphaba’s roommate is also her polar opposite, Glinda, played by Ariana Grande. The two do not get along well at first, but in two shakes of a conductor’s baton they’ll be BFFs, heading to the Emerald City aboard an Art Deco steam train. They’re off to see the — well, you know.

Also at Shiz is Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), a feckless but oh-so-charming prince who turns everyone’s head, but mostly those of Glinda and Elphaba. He leads a great number, Dancing Through Life, which will drive librarians crazy as it features multiple rotating hamster-wheel bookshelves, and I have no idea how the volumes stay put. I was, to borrow a word from the movie’s Ozian dialect, confusified.

There’s also Boq (Ethan Slater), a feckless Munchkin — not a lot of feck in the Shiz student body — who has a crush on Glinda but is convinced to settle for Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode).

Adding some needed gravitas to the proceedings is Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, a combination of Snape and Dumbledore if you’re looking for Potter parallels, but far more evil than either of them. And then there’s Jeff Goldblum, defying gravitas as The Wizard of Oz, who never seemed very trustworthy in the 1939 movie, and feels even less so here. I mean, who has that many monkeys at their disposal and doesn’t at least get them some typewriters?

Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) does a good job keeping the lengthy story moving along at a good clip, and he makes some mostly good choices when it comes to production design and special effects.

In the latter camp, I was glad to see computers used to their fullest to create realistic talking animals such as Doctor Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), a bespectacled goat who teaches history at Shiz until driven from his job by what I suppose are animal-wrongs activists.

But there are also scenes of flying broomsticks and flying monkeys that recall the simple practical effects used in the movie 85 years ago. It’s a difficult needle to thread, making an homage that doesn’t look cheesy or dated, but Chu and his team pull it off nicely.

The leads are excellent, and the movie knows when to pull in for a closeup that can reveal more nuanced emotion than you’d ever get from a Broadway performance. Also (not surprisingly) not a song has been cut from the original show — all the changes are additive.

And so, if you like Act I, then stretch your legs in what amounts to the longest intermission in history. The bar’s open.

Wicked opens Nov. 22 in theatres.

4 stars out of 5