wickeder

[calimac]

B. and I just endured some three hours of watching the Wicked movie. The charge for streaming it online having been more than we wanted to pay (and far more, it turns out, than it was worth), B. put a hold on a library DVD and it came in.

Mind, I haven't seen the stage musical, and I never finished reading the Maguire novel. But seeing the movie fresh, I found:

The plot was forced (as in, "we're gonna cram in Wizard of Oz references whether they fit or not"). The dialogue was broken and discontinuous. The special effects were garish. The songs were dull and, even worse, sometimes gratuitously irritating. The problem is that they stood in the place of better songs. For instance, the movie begins with a song about how the Wicked Witch is dead. I could hardly avoid wishing I was hearing the infinitely more catchy song on the same topic from 1939 instead. And the song about visiting the wonders of the Emerald City was a pale, anemic little thing that made me think longingly of the similarly-themed but much more vivid and colorful "New York, New York" by Bernstein/Comden & Green from On the Town.

Thumb down on this one.

Comments

Well!

[lsanderson]

The touring production that I saw was shorter even with an intermission. Something Marmite something too much bread?

[sartorias]

I think I'll give this one a pass. Thanks for taking the bullet for the rest of us.

[wild_patience]

I really enjoyed it. I haven't seen the stage production, but I have the CD with the original cast and know the songs, which it kept to.

It's beautifully shot - gorgeous sets and costumes, and I thought the casting of Glinda and Elphaba was great. I was at first leery, knowing only of them as pop singers, but after I heard and saw Ariana Grande on SNL, I was enthusiastic. I found Cynthia Erivo on YouTube and discovered she could actually sing as well. I also thought it very appropriate that they cast a Black woman as a woman who is stared at and despised everywhere she goes simply for the color of her skin.

I do think that if anyone reads the book after seeing the movie, they will be greatly disappointed. I read the book before the musical came out and was wondering how such a dark and depressing book could be turned into a popular musical. The answer was that they just tossed out things and changed characters.

Some things didn't work. Prof. Dillamond taught natural sciences in the book. In the movie, he teaches history, and that works as he can make the points he needs to make. It doesn't work when, after he is dragged off, he is replaced by a man who has the lion cub (the infant Cowardly Lion) in a cage and starts talking about the wonderful invention known as the cage. Say what? What does that have to do with history, and I'm sure everyone knew about cages. Many of the students (like Boq, the Munchkinlander) were there studying agriculture to take home. There were bird cages around. This just didn't fit.

[calimac]

Sure, the singing quality was good, but that doesn't help if the songs are dull.

[sturgeonslawyer]

I haven't seen the movie, but I saw and loved the stage show when it passed through here a few years before the pandemic of 2020.

The songs are, to me, a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I like them enough that the OC album is on my hard drive with, among others, Camelot, Spamalot, and The Book of Mormon. In particular, I think "Defying Gravity" is an extraordinary end-of-the-first-act showstopper, and "For Good," in the second act, makes my eyes water a little (I haven't actually cried in over 20 years, which drives me a little bit crazy) every time.

[athenais]

I never wanted to see it and I'm not likely to change my mind. I haven't cared for the songs myself.