The accusation of “all style, no substance” gets thrown around often, sometimes appropriately, but what about a film that has neither style nor substance, no matter how much it tries to sell that it has both? Wicked: For Good is that picture, one that probably wouldn’t exist if not for the hubris of everyone involved in its creation. Its mere premise was baffling: taking a two and a half hour musical and adapting it into two feature films totalling nearly five hours, the second of which would take a 45 minute second act and turn it into something thrice as long.
If the first Wicked tells the tale of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) burgeoning relationship, as well as the revelation that the Wizard is a fraud and fascist, then For Good focuses on the aftermath of Elphaba’s rebellion against the Wizard, their ongoing battle for the good of Oz, and the fractured relationships left in the wake of her decision. It is, largely, a replica of the source material – trailing through narrative while The Wizard of Oz happens in the background – but padded beyond reason with everything from clumsily directed action scenes to songs freshly written for the screen.
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Original book writer Winnie Holzman and co-writer Dana Fox can seemingly find nothing worth saying as a means of stretching out scenes, save for having characters explicitly repeat themselves or clarifying what was shown seconds prior. Their vague gestures toward developing the politics of Oz are equally guilty of this. Having a character declare that munchkins need papers to travel when you’ve already shown a fascist silencing people (and animals) and his propaganda being shared everywhere is just a hat on a hat.
Stephen Schwartz’s new music for the film is just as culpable. Take the lyrics for “The Girl in the Bubble”, a song in which Glinda, who has lived in a bubble her whole life and was recently given a bubble for transport, sings all about how she is a girl in a bubble. And, you guessed it, her bubble is going to pop. Musical theatre has always thrived on the ability of characters being able to convey their thoughts and/or emotions through song, but has it ever felt quite as stupid and telegraphed as this? Every single piece of writing or singing that isn’t from the source text doesn’t just feel like fluff, but an underlining of every sentence uttered and any theme that was gestured at, just in case you were too busy staring at your phone.
If there’s an innocent individual to be found in For Good, it is, just as with Wicked, Ariana Grande’s marvellous performance as Glinda. Just as with the first feature, she reminds everyone of her skill at both the flippant comedy and gutting drama. In her eyes you can read exactly the emotional journey that Glinda is navigating. Even when the film tries to hamper her – be it with some of the worst lighting in contemporary cinema or with having flashbacks that have a child actress tell you what her performance already showed – Grande is a star and feels like even more of a lead here than Cynthia Erivo.
In spite of everyone else around them either delivering performances that could be considered phoning it in (Jeff Goldblum), actively bad (Michelle Yeoh), or simply a charismatic void (Jonathan Bailey), Erivo and Grande shine together. The two have such a natural rapport and they sell the relationship between the women so well that it’s a crime whenever they aren’t together, in part because it means returning to the dull padded mess around them, and in part because they’re just so genuinely good to watch. Their voices and chemistry make the film watchable, brightening up even the muddiest night scenes or the washed out sets they inhabit.
Jon M Chu, for all his maximalist tendencies, is as much a fraud as his Wizard, rarely allowing the show’s emotional beats to land because he’s too busy surrounding his performers with either CGI sludge or a camera that can’t sit still to save its life (more often doing nothing more than rotating around them). Perhaps if not for the fact that he was working with a shallow expansion of an already threadbare act of theatre, the limitations of his directing would be less obvious. But, just as is the case with the stage show, the back half is weaker than the first, so For Good lacks the splashier numbers and the verve of Wicked.
With no substance and no style to be found, all that is left in Wicked: For Good is two actresses, doing more than just belting their hearts out by giving genuinely compelling performances. Maybe that’s enough for some, but after wading through five hours of Chu’s adaptation, it’s hard not to wonder how much better served these women would have been with a single feature that honed in on their brilliance. Beyond just serving as a means for finishing a story that could have been told more succinctly in under three hours, For Good has no reason for existing.