Directed by: Jon M. Chu.
Written by: Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox.
Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, and Michelle Yeoh.
Runtime: 138 minutes.
‘Wicked: For Good’ is done for good, thank God
No one mourns the wicked, and I won’t mourn “Wicked” now that its run has come to an end.
My eyes need a rest from the pink and green — the branded Stanley tumblers, the branded Witches Brew and The Good Witch margaritas at Chili’s, the branded Elphaba’s Cold Brew and Glinda’s Pink Potion Starbucks drinks. Pink and green as far as they eye can see for the second consecutive holiday season because Universal Pictures was more interested in dipping into the same well twice to sell slippers and T-shirts and eyeshadow palettes and wine glasses – heck, there are even “Wicked” Crocs – thank in making an artful adaptation of a beloved musical.
There are downsides to being so popular, as Glinda the Good Witch learns in tedious part two. “Wicked: For Good” picks up five years after we left off. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is banished in a forest hideout, continuing her fight for animal rights, while Glinda (Ariana Grande) has been elevated to the Wizard’s spokeswoman (or, functionally, his chief propaganda minister). In Oz, Elphaba has become a scapegoat, a boogeyman, while Glinda is its glittering pink-hued hope, engaged now to be married to the dashing Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), captain of the Wizard’s Guard.
It's a fairy tale ending fit for a fairy tale princess, only it’s founded on a lie. The animals are still enslaved, Glinda is not as happy as she seems, and dashing Fiyero has fallen for Elphaba, who is not the Wicked Witch the people of Oz believe her to be.
It’s not much of a story, and what’s there is terminally boring. “Wicked” wasn’t high art either, but it had the charisma of odd-couple Elphaba and Glinda playing off each other at school, two enemies nudged to friendship through forced proximity. It’s a winning formula that’s missing in “Wicked: For Good,” which isolates its heroines into their own storylines. Elphaba’s scenes lack weight or purpose, with Erivo doing her level best acting to a green screen, surrounded by dead-eyed CGI animals.
“Wicked: For Good” gets even more cloying when it introduces (or rather, refuses to introduce) the Dorothy of it all, grinding what there is of a narrative to a halt with winking nods to the pigtailed Kansas girl. And don’t expect the songs to do the heavy lifting. All the good ones are loaded in the front half; there’s nothing in the second half to match the giddiness of “Popular” or the blow-the-roof-off bombast of “Defying Gravity.”
It would beg the question why “Wicked” was ever broken into two tortured parts that are collectively twice as long as the stage musical they’re based on, but it’s obvious the answer is money. It’s cynical, but why else would a fantasy musical set in a mythical land feel less like a vibrant world in which to escape our own than a tedious exercise in brand management that has all the lived-in authenticity of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float? You need a reason to sell those pink and green margaritas at Chili’s, after all.
Maybe “Wicked: For Good” is the movie we deserve, a snapshot of where we’re at culturally in 2025, when social media platforms are overrun with AI-generated slop and everything is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Of course, a film based on a stage musical based on a book based on a movie based on another book was the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2024.
At least those margaritas look pretty good.
Barbara’s ranking
1.5/4 stars
