"Wicked" Review: A Fantastical Brew of Hits and Misses

The long-awaited movie adaptation is incredibly flawed, but it's highs allow it to defy our critical gravity.

January 3, 2025

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1385 epic poem Troilus and Criseyde, the character Pandarus, armed with sharp-witted rhetoric at every turn, comments on Criseyde’s ladies sleeping outside her chamber door each night by remarking, “It is not good a sleeping hound to wake.”

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The poem means it literally, but nearly 650 years later, it is an oft-invoked proverb used to explain the benefit of allowing things to rest if they are causing no harm. Instead of digging up bones, it’s best to “let sleeping dogs lie.”

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By 1995, we’d had 56 years of The Wizard of Oz, arguably the most beloved film in Hollywood history, and 95 of the Frank L. Baum book on which it's based. We were content. No one needed anything more or anything else.

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So why, for the love of all that is holy, did author Gregory Maguire pen a revisionist story framing the Wicked Witch of the West as an underground political insurgent engaged in an illicit affair with a married man?

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The brutally honest answer is that people can’t help themselves, which is why legendary theater composer Stephen Schwartz pleaded so hard with Universal Studios producer Marc Platt to abandon their planned live-action adaptation of the novel for Schwartz’s ambitious stage production. After a year-long collaboration with My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman to develop the musical’s story - an extreme deviation from Maguire's novel - Wicked was born.

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Of course, the journey to the stage contains many rewrites and test-runs, but by the time the musical debuted on June 10, 2003, from children’s book to film to novel to stage musical, humanity had collectively elected to not only wake the sleeping dog, but feed, pet, and play with it.

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Now we’ve arrived, 21 years after premiere night, to the long-anticipated film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the revisionist novel based on the 1939 movie based on the 1900 book. Is this incessant milking worth the squeeze? Should the sleeping dog have been left to lie?

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Well, it depends on how one analyzes such things.

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If you base your opinion of a movie on the quality of its performances, then you’ll be polarized. Cynthia Erivo effectively walks the tightrope between pleasing snobby theater folk aching for any reason to decry cinematic adaptations of their beloved stage favorites and ushering in audience members now to the world of Wicked. Elphaba feels entirely original, with a distinct personality and vision that honors Holzman’s staunch activist while lending her the depth most such people lack.

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Jonathan Bailey, fresh off his Emmy nomination for Fellow Travelers, resolves scattershot characterization of the dreamy Fiyero, torn between the surface-level Galinda and the allure of Elphaba’s fearsome, challenging independence.

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Unfortunately, Peter Dinklage, voicing Professor Dillamond, an animal persecuted under a vaguely defined idea of Ozian racism, fails to inject much sympathy into the kindly sage goat. Michelle Yeoh falls flat as the villainous Madame Morrible, never surrendering herself to the sorceress’ insidious impulses. Ariana Grande is the perfect middle ground, oscillating between distinctly average and outright brilliant, sometimes in the same scene. Matched with the more talented Erivo, the two actresses, whose bond anchors the movie, often fail to match each other.

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If the story rules the roost, you’ll be disappointed. The thematic arc of a brilliant young woman singled out for uncontrollable differences falls flat, partly due to the undefined parameters of what perturbs the Ozian masses. Green skin? Boo. Paraplegic? Yay! Asian, black, white, queer, male, female, tall, short, fat, skinny, old, young? Yay! Animal? Boo. It’s impossible, outside of Erivo’s excellence, to ascertain what specifically each character is up against or contributes to the trials and tribulations of others. Absent a clear socio-political structure, the story’s commentary falls flat.

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The primary narrative of Elphaba coming into her own while working as an activist for Oz’s animals is uninteresting and underexplored. We never learn why animals get discriminated against, and none of them receive any development save Dillamond, who’s equal parts condescendingly treacly and interminably dull. By the time Elphaba reaches the Emerald City and speaks her heart’s desire to restore the animals to their rightful place in Oz, we feel underwhelmed, almost annoyed at the recurrence of this narrative distraction rather than overjoyed at the potential resolution of a story that’searned our investment.

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If visuals dictate your opinion, you’ll find little enjoyment in Wicked. The sets have incredible potential, namely Shiz University's entrance and the Emerald City, but Wicked fails to pack a visual punch. The film always looks muted, as though there’s a blue-gray tint over every scene. The golden plains don’t shine, and the emeralds in the city don’t sparkle. In Oz, color is the ultimate storytelling device, and the film fails to utilize it to distinguish the emotional significance of individual sets.

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If you love movie musicals and the sing-a-long quality of their emphatic numbers, be warned: Wicked lacks in the song department. Best of luck distinguishing one from the next, and if you walked in blind but had spent two decades hearing the theater kid war cry of “Defying Gravity” being the song to end all songs, condolences be upon you: not only is the song’s uplifting lyrical content not justified by the movie (though it certainly is by Erivo’s performance), it’s also not a pleasant listen. It always feels like it’s catching up to itself and unsure where it wants to go.

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If compelling characters are your requirement, look elsewhere. You’ll like Elphaba well enough, but you'll rarely feel compelled by her because Wicked doesn't drive her to be someone, do something, or genuinely feel alive. Galinda has a charmingly vapid self-assuredness, and Fiyero has conceptual appeal, but both are served by their actors, not by the screenplay that contains them. Nessarose, the sister who will become the Wicked Witch of the East, gets a scene or two to set up what’s to come, but it doesn't make whatever the sequel will bring feel earned or worth our time.

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So, we have a movie musical that features hit-and-miss acting, bad songs, a horrific cameo from the musical's original stars, fails to function as a standalone movie while also effectively setting up the sequel a la The Fellowship of the Ring, is a bore to look at, has an underdeveloped story, and doesn't inspire a rewatch.

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How, then, is Wicked still a good movie?

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It’s simple: it just works.

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Sure, it’s not as fun as it could be, but it’s fun. Despite its 160-minute runtime, it’s a breeze (except for the Emerald City scenes, which slow the proceedings). There’s some unquantifiable quality perpetually at play that draws you in and keeps you wanting more, even though you can objectively critique it as a decidedly imperfect work.

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Doubtless, this sounds like telling someone you want them despite their imperfections, and just like that theoretically romantic soliloquy, it sounds more like one long, thinly veiled insult than a sincere expression of admiration, but Wicked is fun. It’s not quite bold and beautiful, but it is assured and expressive. It’s delightful when necessary, refined when desired, and never condescends to either of its leading ladies; considering their seismic differences and how easy it would be to reduce them to generalities and make their friendship an exercise in cynicism, that's a remarkable feat.

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Ultimately, if one were to put Wicked’s functionality down to one thing, it would be the friendship between Galinda and Elphaba. The two begin as enemies: Elphaba, the cultured activist bent on intellectual expansion and global improvement, and Galinda, the conceited brat intent on crafting a veneer she can weaponize to put others down. It’s familiar ground having polar opposites find commonality and bond, but Wicked's authenticity makes it a legitimate development rather than a hackneyed aim at making us care about the characters.

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Truthfully, the scene where the two set aside their differences is ineffective. Galinda, having tricked Elphaba into donning a hideous hat to a social gathering, learns her rival has strong-armed Madame Morrible into taking the aspiring sorceress under her wing as a sign of goodwill after Galinda selfishly pawns the crushing munchkin Boq onto Nessarose. When Elphaba arrives, she gets mercilessly mocked by her peers, exposing Galinda’s treachery. Galinda, wracked with guilt, joins Elphaba in a peculiar dance and walks her through a long-awaited emotional outpour. Eventually, the crowd follows suit, the two return to their shared suite, and Elphaba goes from laughing stock to Shiz darling.

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It’s a bad scene because Galinda doesn’t actually risk anything to do the right thing since her army of minions will happily follow her off a cliff if commanded. Still, it does feel like these two could feasibly find their way to one another. Don’t we all have that friend who's a little fond of themselves and whose vapidity occasionally spoils their good nature but possesses a sensitivity and warmth not everyone gets to see? Don’t we all have that friend who’s immeasurably jaded, intellectually sharp and individualistic, seemingly impervious to receiving kind deeds or magnanimous gestures, who needs a push from someone inherently pushy? Don’t those two people, one in need of grounding, the other needing wings to fly, offer precisely what the other needs?

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It’s a beautiful friendship, and Erivo and Grande do a (mostly) marvelous job bringing it to life. If the film ever drags, misses the mark, fails to explore its themes and ideas, or throws in an uninspired musical number where developmental dialogue and powerful performances would suffice, we can count on the central bond.

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Now, in the end, with all the bad dissected and all the good praised, the question remains: is it, in fact, better to let sleeping dogs lie? Wicked answers that question in the simplest form imaginable:

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Even the oldest, klutziest dog, one that can’t run, is too tired to fetch, and mistakes Playdoh for Beneful, is still a dog, and we’ll love it no matter what.