In many ways John M Chu's Wicked, a third- or fourth-generation retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, feels like a sort of period piece. The period in question isn't that long ago, certainly, but even so – the very confidence of the thing, the fact it's a 160-minute film proximally based on only the first half of a long-but-not-that-long stage musical, the scale of it� it all feels very pre-pandemic, somehow, and perhaps this isn't surprising. Plans for the film started over ten years ago; the stage Wicked opened in 2003, the novel it's based on dates from 1995, and the children's book that the novel takes its inspiration from goes all the way back to 1900. On and on we go, into the utmost past.

Keanu Reeves plays John Wicked, a retired hitman who takes up his gun again when some flying monkeys in the employ of the Russian mafia kill his pet cowardly lion� no, I can't sustain that for a thousand words, I'm afraid, although some people may well find the plot of Wicked to be about as intelligible. Familiarity with the plot and characters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or the movie version (which clearly takes a more neutral view of the Wizard), is more or less taken for granted; and why not, given it's become such a staple of the culture?

Anyway, the film opens with rejoicing in Munchkinland, which is one of the oblasts of the land of Oz – this has been occasioned by the death of the Wicked Witch of the West, a notably green woman who is not noticeably mourned by anyone else, and certainly not Glinda the Good, another witch (played by Ariana Grande, very likely the only performer currently working who makes Anya Taylor-Joy look like a rough-hewn manual labourer). But, someone pipes up, didn't she know the Wicked Witch? Were they not, in fact, at school together? Cue prodigiously extended flashback!

And so we meet Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), the product of an adulterous affair between a travelling salesman and the wife of the governor of Munchkinland (the governor himself is played, somewhat unexpectedly, by Andy Nyman from Ghost Stories). Too much absinthe, perhaps, is imbibed by the lovers, with the result that Elphaba pops out a firmly verdant shade, surprising everyone.

Well, the years pass and a now-grown Elphaba escorts her younger sister to Shiz University (the place is, obviously, the shiz, though what happens to anyone's nizzle there is not dwelt upon). Elphaba isn't supposed to be staying but the head of the sorcery department (Michelle Yeoh) spies her latent magical talent and basically drafts her. This somewhat dislocates the nose of a youthful Glinda (still Ariana Grande), who proceeds to be viciously cruel to Elphaba.

Still, dark forces seem to be on the move in Oz, something far more important than two school students falling out, and Elphaba finds herself increasingly hoping that her talent will attract the attention of the Wizard, the ruler of Oz, so she can get him to help with this. But in the meantime she and Glinda find themselves both mixed up with a handsome young noble named Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), whose magnetic effect on the ladies may have something to do with the fact he is one of the royalty of Winkie country (again I must promise that I am not making any of this stuff up). Will the two young women get to go to the Emerald City? Will Fiyero decide who he's really serious about? And will L Frank Baum, creator of Oz, get a credit on an enormous movie largely inspired by his work?

Well, not this year, that's for certain. (That's entertainment law, I guess.) The co-spousal unit and I were jammy enough to land a couple of free tickets to the stage show in London a couple of years back and I found that I rather enjoyed it; the solo numbers anyway, for the bits with all the chorus had a sort of wall-of-sound effect which was more intimidating than anything else. This despite the fact that I tried reading Gregory Maguire's novel on a long-haul flight back in the noughties and found it somewhat hard work.

I'm in the minority, of course, for the book – or at least the stage show – have proved to be massively popular and influential. It's difficult to look at films like Maleficent or Cruella, revisionist, morally nuanced takes on the formative years of famous female villains from children's stories, and not see a Wicked influence there. It may be the case that the sheer popularity of Wicked works against the main conceit of the story. Back in 1995, retelling a fairy tale from the perspective of the villain, revealing in the process that things are not as clear-cut as they first appeared, had a certain subversive novelty value. These days it's just one of those things you take for granted, and some people may proceed from the premise that the Witch is the good guy.

The sharper edges of Maguire's writing have been filed down for the musical, anyway – Wicked is a rare case of a non-animated mainstream movie which has managed to land a PG certificate in the UK. The plot may sound like Carrie Goes To Hogwarts, but there's a lot more J. K. Rowling than Stephen King in the mix here (ironically, given King has made his own contribution to the corpus of non-canonical Oz-related literature).

Still, there's a certain cleverness and cynicism going on here which I found rather appealing, with several of the songs making heavy use of irony. Erivo and Grande put them across well, obviously, although suggestions that the two stars have adopted such radically different performance styles that it seems like their scenes have been edited together from two separate movies seem to me to be on the money. Turning up late to upstage the others is Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, who gives the same kind of dark modulation of his usual schtick that will be familiar to anyone who watched Kaos. And whatever you think of the decision to split the musical in half, it does ensure that this first film has a hum-dinger of a climax.

Even so, there's a lot of committeethink and safe-playing on display in Wicked, which in the end seems content to occasionally hint at and show flashes of subversiveness and genuine wit and intelligence. This is probably enough to ensure it does extremely well with audiences, and residual affection for musicals and this particular story may well mean it finds the happy buttons of the members of AMPAS, at least. But it only sporadically cast its spell over me, I'm afraid.

Awix

02.12.24 Front Page

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