The film adaptation of Wicked is based on the Broadway musical, which itself draws inspiration from Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, *Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West*. Both Maguire’s novel and the stage production expand upon L. Frank Baum’s original *The Wizard of Oz*, published in 1900 and famously adapted into a film in 1939. The musical has become one of Broadway's longest-running and most successful productions. With a screenplay by Winnie Holzman (who also wrote the book for the Wicked musical) and Dana Fox (*Cruella*), and directed by Jon M. Chu (*Now You See Me 2*, *Crazy Rich Asians*), *Wicked* picks up around the time that *The Wizard of Oz* concludes. Following the death of the Wicked Witch, Glinda the Good Witch informs Munchkinland of the news. As the munchkins celebrate and burn a large effigy resembling a witch, one asks Glinda if she knew her. What follows is nearly three hours detailing how Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a green-skinned girl with magical abilities triggered by her emotions, interacts with Galinda (Ariana Grande), a spoiled and pink-loving student as they begin their education at Shiz University. Visually, *Wicked* is stunningly beautiful. The talking animals are remarkably rendered, and the sequences involving flying monkeys are particularly impressive. Peter Dinklage voices Dr. Dillamond, a goat teacher whose storyline proves to be quite emotional. Even the brief appearances of the bear nurse and dog doctor in the film’s opening scenes are visually striking. Given the number of visual effects teams credited on the film, it's no surprise that the CGI is so intricate. OPSIS, Framestore, and ILM were among the most involved VFX houses, along with a dozen others; FoyProAI is an intriguing addition to the list. FoyProAI, which doesn’t have a readily available website, specializes in de-aging, up-aging, and beauty work for film. They contributed 400 shots to *Wicked*. Moments of genuine brilliance arise from the chemistry between Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Grande's comedic background shines through, particularly drawing on her experience at SNL. She provides much of the comic relief as Galinda with her outgoing personality carrying many scenes, while Erivo delivers a more understated performance with a dry delivery. However, the familiar musical formula can be frustrating. Story progression often halts to accommodate songs, which disrupts the flow of events. While musicals inherently include singing, it’s jarring when characters attempting to escape on a flying broom are delayed for ten minutes by an extended song and dance sequence about their friendship. It seems simpler to just get on the broom and sing along the way. Certain scenes feel included solely to enhance the impact of a particular song or to force connections between characters that don’t naturally exist, like Elphaba and Fiyero's unnecessary excursion into the forest to free a lion cub. These detours are designed to demonstrate Fiyero’s disdain for reading and his growing affection for Elphaba over Galinda. The film appears faithful to its source material, but the Hollywood tendency to transform villains into sympathetic characters is problematic. Sometimes, purely malicious antagonists can be enjoyable and make protagonists more compelling. For the first hour and a half, *Wicked* treats Elphaba poorly, with everyone judging her based on her skin color. After she becomes friends with Galinda, she develops compassion for mistreated animals, which contributes to her opposition of The Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), along with being one of the few characters capable of reading magical spells. *Wicked* can be likened to *Mean Girls* set at Hogwarts, populated by superficial people except for a character who is supposed to be evil. Elphaba embraces her role as the Wicked Witch because her beliefs differ from those around her and she refuses to compromise them simply to maintain peace. While *Wicked* boasts impressive visual effects and occasionally explores compelling ideas rooted in the world established over a century ago, it ultimately suffers from being an overly long musical that feels like a drawn-out, sometimes incomprehensible, high-pitched ordeal.

Source on TMDB