Movie Review: Wicked

While watching the new movie "Wicked", which has been adapted from the long-running Broadway musical I realized that given the years of hard work, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the enormous amount of money spent on 2 Wicked movies (Wicked 2 will be released in November 2025), is that out of respect for this much effort, no critic could ever give a bad review to a movie like this one. I have no doubt that Wicked will be one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture this year, making it one of the few musicals ever nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history.

The story of Wicked is about the good witch Galinda played by Ariana Grande and the wicked witch of the West Elphaba played by Cynthia Erivo and how they met and became friends at a college called Shiz University. There are frequent musical numbers in this film, and the singing of all the cast members, especially Erivo and Grande is always outstanding. The overall story is slow at times and one flaw I thought was the transition from the friendship of Elphaba and Galinda into an ending when Elphaba and Galinda meet the Wizard, played by Jeff Goldblum, that seemed contrived and too out of nowhere. The ending, in my opinion, broke up the flow of the story too abruptly and seemed designed to create a dramatic ending out of nowhere.

At the end of the movie, there was a "To be Continued" message for the next film, Wicked 2, which will be released in late November 2025 and show Elphaba's transition into an evil witch.

The real strengths of this film are more the musical numbers, amazing sets, and costumes, and less the overall story, which I thought was sometimes weak with an overly complex and contrived ending.

I mostly agree with the high 90% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and I recommend this movie.