160 min | PG | November 22, 2024 | Universal Pictures
Jon M. Chu brings the first act of the Broadway juggernaut to screen with two lead performances that justify twenty years of development hell. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are the real deal.
Elphaba is born green. She is brilliant and powerful and despised for her appearance. Glinda is blonde and beloved and shallow in ways she does not yet understand. They are forced to share a room at Shiz University in the land of Oz. They hate each other. They become friends. Their friendship transforms them both and sets them on paths toward becoming the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. Jon M. Chu adapts the first act of the Broadway musical with a fidelity that will satisfy devotees and an expansion that gives the material cinematic scope. The film takes its time. At two hours and forty minutes it is sprawling and deliberate and trusts that the characters and the music will hold the audience through a story that is essentially all setup for a second film.
Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba with a volcanic emotional range that anchors every scene. Her singing voice is extraordinary and Erivo uses it not as performance but as expression. When Elphaba sings “Defying Gravity” the moment lands because Erivo has built to it through two hours of suppressed rage and longing. The green makeup becomes invisible within minutes because Erivo’s face communicates so much through it. Ariana Grande plays Glinda with comic precision and a vocal brightness that contrasts Erivo’s power. Grande understands that Glinda’s superficiality is armor and she lets the cracks show at exactly the right moments. The chemistry between them is the film’s foundation. Jonathan Bailey plays Fiyero with charismatic ease. Michelle Yeoh plays Madame Morrible with imperious authority. Jeff Goldblum plays the Wizard in a cameo that promises more.
Chu shot on massive practical sets at Sky Studios in England and the production design by Nathan Crowley creates an Oz that feels tangible and fantastical simultaneously. Shiz University is a lived-in campus. The Emerald City gleams. Munchkinland has texture and color. The cinematography by Alice Brooks is lush and controlled. The musical numbers are staged with theatrical energy and cinematic movement. The camera flies and soars and holds close on faces during the songs that demand intimacy. The visual effects integrate with the practical environments more successfully than most fantasy films manage. The choreography by Christopher Scott fills the frame with movement. The orchestrations by Stephen Oremus expand the Broadway arrangements into full cinematic scores.
The film is too long. Some scenes that worked in a theater with a live audience feel padded on screen. The political allegory about the Wizard’s persecution of talking animals is broad and Chu does not sharpen it. But these are the limitations of a faithful adaptation, not a failure of craft. The musical is beloved for specific reasons and Chu delivers on those reasons. The friendship between Elphaba and Glinda is the emotional core and Erivo and Grande make it sing in every sense. The film ends on a cliffhanger that earns anticipation for the second part. Chu has made a blockbuster musical that remembers that musicals work because people feel things they cannot say and sing them instead.