<\/p>\n
\u201cGive us a clock tick\u201d is an expression uttered several times in \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d<\/a> But Jon M. Chu\u2019s two-part musical has asked for quite a bit more than that.<\/p>\n Together, the two halves of this \u201cWicked\u201d adaptation have run 297 minutes, which, more than the threat of lions and tigers and bears, is enough to make any moviegoer not entirely bewitched by the \u201cWizard of Oz\u201d revision breathe a sigh of \u201cOh, my.\u201d<\/p>\n So it\u2019s a lot of clock ticks, quite a few more than the stage musical<\/a>, which had roughly half the runtime. But \u201cWicked\u201d has always been a spectacle of scale: power ballads and sprawling sets, all in retina-testing technicolor. Muchness is part of the point of \u201cWicked,\u201d a song-and-dance assault of allegory and anthems relayed with an earnestness that you might call endearing if you\u2019re good or tiresome if you\u2019re, well, you know.<\/p>\n For anyone in the former camp who somehow felt last year\u2019s part one wasn\u2019t enough, \u201cFor Good\u201d will probably be a very welcoming second helping. Since these films were shot at the same time, much of the tone and tenor of the first chapter continues in \u201cFor Good.\u201d There\u2019s more Cynthia Erivo, more Ariana Grande and more soaring soliloquies. For most \u201cWicked\u201d fans, more is good.<\/p>\n But for those of us who felt \u2014 what\u2019s a non-wicked way to say this? \u2014 mildly waterboarded, in pink and green, by \u201cWicked,\u201d<\/a> \u201cFor Good\u201d doesn\u2019t offer much relief. There is, to be sure, great talent on display in these films, particularly in the case of Erivo. But \u201cFor Good,\u201d like its predecessor, often feels more like a Production than a movie, with characters shuffled on and offstage with Oz-like orchestration.<\/p>\n That may be an unavoidable aspect of a pop amalgamation like \u201cWicked.\u201d This is a big-screen adaptation of a 2003 stage musical (Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz) based on a 1995 book (Gregory Maguire) inspired by a 1939 movie (Victor Fleming and company) and the original 1900 \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d by L. Frank Baum. More than a century of American entertainment is packed inside \u201cWicked.\u201d<\/p>\n So, yes, \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d is basically history at this point. And that was much of the wit of Maguire\u2019s book, which took Baum\u2019s Oz and imagined that all of its apparent dichotomies \u2014 the vilified Wicked Witch of the West, the perfect Glinda the Good Witch, the powerful Wizard \u2014 were mere propaganda. If history is a set of falsehoods agreed upon, then Oz, too, is a lie.<\/p>\n Those political metaphors move to the forefront in \u201cFor Good.\u201d Having spent much of part one filling in the backstory of Elphaba (Erivo) and Glinda (Grande) as classmates at Shiz University, the second chapter finds Oz in an increasingly agitated state. Elphaba, demonized as the Wicked Witch of the West, is now living in exile.<\/p>\n \u201cShield your children,\u201d trumpets the government messaging. \u201cTrust no animals!\u201d<\/p>\n While the Yellow Brick Road is laid down, like railroad tracks on the frontier in an industrial haze, the hunt for Elphaba ratchets up. A travel ban is put in effect for animals and Munchkins, alike. Oz, it\u2019s said, is \u201ca place that seems to be devolving.\u201d<\/p>\n No one above the age of 10 will fail to miss the target of these references. \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d isn\u2019t shy about them, and that frankness \u2014 and the movie\u2019s ardent belief in empathy and multiculturalism \u2014 is both the film’s most stirring and most heavy-handed trait. Each iteration of \u201cWicked\u201d has come with its own political relevancy. Maguire, himself, was influenced by the drumbeat leading up the Gulf War. \u201cFor Good\u201d may be the most pointed and timely interpretation yet. Some of that is woven into the play, and some of it is expanded upon in Holzman’s and Dana Fox\u2019s script, which pads the second act with a little more minor character development and a pair of new songs.<\/p>\n The catchiest tunes (\u201cPopular,\u201d Defying Gravity\u201d) are in the rearview, though. Instead, \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d is all storm clouds and rebellion, as Elphaba mounts a resistance to the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Characters like Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), captain of the Wizard\u2019s guard, are forced to pick a side.<\/p>\n Considering the source material of the 1939 classic \u2014 old Hollywood at the very height of its powers \u2014 you would think Oz would come through clearly as a setting, only seen from a different perspective. But despite Chu\u2019s energetic handling of earlier films like \u201cIn the Heights\u201d<\/a> and \u201cCrazy Rich Asians,\u201d<\/a> \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d struggles to really orient us in a place. When Dorothy and Toto drop in (they\u2019re seen only from afar), you almost yearn for the clear pathway they begin skipping down.<\/p>\n Instead, \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d rather than conjuring Oz anew, always feels like it\u2019s jumping from one set piece to another. Maybe this is a silly gripe for a fantasyland. (\u201cI don’t have any idea where the offices of the Lollipop Guild are!\u201d) But I rarely found myself lifted into a movie world, but rather sat watching it \u2014 sometimes with admiration, rarely with delight \u2014 from the mezzanine. The rub of going for maximum effect all the time is that the actors never have a chance to simply be.<\/p>\n All the momentum that \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d does gather is owed significantly to its stars. To a large degree, these movies have been the Erivo-and-Grande show, a grand spectacle of female friendship that rises above all the petty biases and misjudgments to forge a vision of harmony in opposites. It’s a compelling vision, and Chu, as he did in the triumphant \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d culmination of part one, knows how to stick the landing.<\/p>\n Grande is best at the (too few) comic moments, like a brief impression of Margaret Hamilton’s cackle. But it’s Erivo who really elevates the material. Her Elphaba seems to both believe in the hopeful possibility of \u201cWicked\u201d and fear its impossibility. When she melancholily sings one of the new songs, \u201cNo Place Like Home,\u201d Erivo appears to grasp that it’s going to take more than a click of the heels, or tick of the clock, to get there.<\/p>\n \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d a Universal Pictures release is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action\/violence, some suggestive material and thematic material. Running time: 137 minutes. Two stars out of four.<\/p>\n Jake Coyle, The Associated Press<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cGive us a clock tick\u201d is an expression uttered several times in \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d But Jon M. Chu\u2019s two-part musical has asked for quite a bit more than that. Together, the two halves of this \u201cWicked\u201d adaptation have run 297 minutes, which, more than the threat of lions and tigers and bears, is enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2164602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[24076,415552,357874,391753,408319,328143],"class_list":["post-2164601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-ariana-grande","tag-gregory-maguire","tag-wicked","tag-wicked-witch-of-the-west","tag-winnie-holzman","tag-wizard-of-oz"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Movie-Review-Sorry-my-pretty-\u2018Wicked-For-Good-doesnt-delight.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164603,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164601\/revisions\/2164603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2164602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}