Wicked is the first half of the stage musical that I haven’t seen nor have I read the book its based on or listened to the soundtrack. It’s a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, telling the tale of how the Wicked Witch became Wicked and her friendship with that goodie goodie Glinda. It’s basically a revisionist take on Oz.

And I was very lukewarm on the first half of this film where we meet Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo in green) as she enters Shiz University and meets Glinda (Ariana Grande in pink), her fellow student enemy / frenemy / best friend. Lots of songs, lots of dances, and eventually we reach the Emerald City.

As a musical, I hardly recognized any of the songs and I was left baffled why the stage musical was so pop-u-lar (ahem). It’s the limited musical theater nerd in me, but I couldn’t get into the tunes which left a lot of room to twiddle my thumbs.

Plus the whole magical university with the talking animals and the students who needed a good flame throwing just didn’t interest me. It’s rude and ignores the time/space continuum, but I’d rather have watched season 1 of Wednesday if I wanted odd couple roomies in a magic school.

Not that Erivo and Grande did a bad job. Eviro was sympathetic but it’s telling when her best attribute were her bomb-ass spectacles. Grande did better only in that I didn’t think she could act in the first place. Of course, both of them sing the hell out of their numbers… they wouldn’t have been cast if they couldn’t. But it took me a long time to get invested in their friendship… and I was never invested in any of the other students.

Unfortunate, the first half almost barely even matters once they reach the Emerald City in the second. What even is the point of the school really? I guess it sets up its theme of talking animal rights… but when did that become a thing in the Oz story? Was it just to ram home the themes of racism… as if we didn’t get the point with everyone hating the green person in the room.

It’s embarrassing to admit then when I say I really enjoyed the second half of the flick when it stopped be a high school musical and became more a sci-fi/fantasy epic. It’s so on-the-nose cliché of me as a nerd to like the Lord of the Rings bits and dislike the Glee bits. But it’s true… I went from bored to alert pretty quickly.

I really enjoyed The Emerald City and meeting the wizard as played by a delightful Jeff Goldblum. It became a bit of fun macramé trying to tie the knots between the monkey guards, the fake wizard, the innocent broomstick, and other elements. It’s got an impressive scale, a great look, fun bombast, and solid storytelling… and even the musical bits started to work as an “F You” to all the haters.

Once the film actually gets to the The Wizard of Oz point, I perked up, interested to see how we’d get from good girl Alpheba to Surrender Dorothy. So I’ll be catching part two once it comes out… so credit to this film for eventually getting its Shiz together.

Score: 78