“For Good” may have been a last-minute subtitle change for the second part of director Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” but the song it shares its name with provides a succinct appraisal of the sequel: I can’t say that anything from the stage adaptation was changed for the better, and I know that my time has been wasted for good.
My praise for the first “Wicked” film began and ended with Cynthia Erivo’s lead performance as Elphaba and an appreciation for a handful of the musical numbers, both of which return in lackluster fashion here.
The film fails as a stand-alone work, a follow-up to “Part One” and an adaptation of the musical’s charm, making for a poor lesson in overreliance on source material and audience goodwill. It clings to the story’s cultural significance all the way to the end of a confused, monotonous and remarkably insignificant slog to the finish line.
Beyond the projected box office bonus, it’s befuddling that the decision to split the story got past the boardroom doors at all; the story picks up after the first film divided best friends Elphaba and Galinda (Ariana Grande) in gravity-defying fashion, but every choice it makes in navigating the transition between acts feels designed to bring it crashing to the ground.
To say that the start of the second film thrusts viewers into the thick of things would almost be too kind; it’s more akin to being flung into a void where various “Wicked”-themed hallucinations play out as you and the film slowly lose oxygen.
In many cases, the film doesn’t even attempt to disguise itself from being the rushed second half of another story; Jonathan Bailey’s Prince Fiyero has maybe four or five scenes with dialogue and half a duet with Erivo, a bizarre anticlimax that melts the first film’s budding romance with a soggy sploosh.
Boq, Galinda’s jilted lover played by Ethan Slater, gets a consistently prominent role but disappears entirely by the end of the film. It’s a choice that works in the musical but just feels lazy on celluloid; “For Good” is not a nuanced film, which is to be understood, but letting your story be heavy-handed makes it all the more embarrassing when you can’t seem to land a punch.
Everything that doesn’t suffer from confusing pacing seems to get overcontextualized instead. Among the affected is Galinda, who gets divorced from her Act 1 preppiness and saddled with several unmemorable ballads that ultimately highlight the lack of true gaudiness that Grande never quite captured in the role.
Aided by compositions from cinematographer Alice Brooks that looked flat even when viewed in 3D, Grande’s character glides into the background with shocking ease in scenes where she should have center spotlight. The deficient drama does not make it nuanced, it just makes it unentertaining.
There is simply too much dimension in Chu’s “Wicked,” too many opportunities to notice the goofiness of the story or the artifice of the filmmaking rather than actual efforts made to transform the story into a cinematic spectacle of its own.
Pauses that might have felt natural from the nosebleeds on Broadway feel like editing slip-ups when viewed from a close-up of Jeff Goldblum’s face. Songs that might have felt powerful delivered live are instantly forgotten when heard as poorly-mixed audio from an actor standing in a badly-composed digital landscape. And, most glaringly of all, a story that made sense as the less-exciting second half to a competent package simply doesn’t justify the cost of a ticket when sold separately.
In a pop culture landscape devoid of quality film musicals, Chu’s “Wicked” duology uses its broomstick to sweep the bottom of the barrel in terms of what audiences will accept, and the attempt to position the second half of a mediocre musical as a worthwhile endeavor doubles the insult of adapting it lazily.
Even when watched back-to-back with “Part One,” “Wicked: For Good” is destined to be remembered not as a show-stopping finale, but as the part of the sleepover-double-feature where everybody resoundingly falls asleep.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
