Wicked: For Good bursts the bubble of the first film

If, like me, you enjoyed the first part of Jon M. Chu’s two-part adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, I’ve got some bad news for you. Wicked: For Good (Rating: ✭✭) is a slog. A dark, depressing, joyless slog, with only one real bright light.

Most fans of the Stephen Schwartz/Winnie Holzman show, adapted of course from Gregory Maguire’s novel, knew that the second film would be a tougher nut to crack. The first act features the show’s best numbers, and it sets up the plot and characters well.

I actually appreciated the way that Chu and screenwriters Holzman and Dana Fox opened up some moments in last year’s blockbuster, so that sequences like the Ozdust Ballroom scene expanded the world and got you deeper into this psychologically rich prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The political allegory about a government clamping down on outsiders and using propaganda to demonize dissenting voices also felt very of the moment.

But if Wicked: Part One was all set-up and character-building, Part Two clumsily attempts to tie up all the loose ends and retrofit its bizarre plotting to fit the magical dimensions of the beloved 1939 movie. The pacing and editing are atrocious, and any momentum built up from the first film peters out in the first hour.

Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba has gone into hiding now that she’s been branded a traitor by the (definitely unwizardly) Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), and his henchwoman/enabler Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Our green anti-heroine’s opposite number, Glinda (Ariana Grande) has been christened Glinda the Good, and springs an engagement on Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who sports new military-style duds and secretly is on Team Elphaba.

The first hour of the film hits monotonous notes of sameness, offering up minor plot points about the building of the Yellow Brick Road, the physics behind Glinda’s magic bubble, the oppression of talking animals and restricting access out of Munchkinland. All of this feels like the padding-filled middle episodes of a Netflix series. It doesn’t help that this film, like the first, appears to be shot through a hazy filter.

None of the actors — save one — gets to show anything they didn’t in the first film. Erivo, although she delivers solid renditions of “No Good Deed” and a rather bland new song, “No Place Like Home,” continues to be hectoring and self-righteous. Yeoh and Goldblum warble through a few more notes, with mixed results (the Wizard’s “Wonderful,” a vaudeville-style number, lives up to its title). Most disappointing of all, Bailey has none of the charm he exuded last year. Romantic action figure Fiyero is a lot less interesting than flirtatious, dancing, omnisexual Fiyero.

The emotional centre of this film is Grande’s Glinda, who’s granted a poignant flashback (involving a rainbow!), and is faced with the biggest moral dilemma of the two-part film. Her new number references life in a bubble — an apt metaphor for white privilege and entitlement — and she exudes genuine depth and compassion. Although we have to wait nearly two hours to hear the title number between her and Elphaba, when it comes it’s beautifully sung and suitably moving. Thank Goodness.

But then Chu spends the rest of the picture trying to resolve the convoluted plot, going beyond the stage show to add a bit of wish fulfillment optimism. Most of it is poorly choreographed, illogical and anticlimactic, scored to musical themes that feel beaten to death by a broomstick.

No one mourns (the) Wicked? Oh yes they do.

Wicked: For Good opens in theatres Nov. 21.