Wicked review: will cast a spell on fanatics but its pacing needs a bit more va va broom

Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s stage musical filling in the backstory of the witches in the Wizard of Oz inspires devotion bordering on derangement in its fans. Jon M. Chu’s lavish cinematic adaptation won’t disappoint them.

It’s a visually ravishing, emotionally freighted vehicle for the prodigious vocal and considerable acting talents of Cynthia Erivo as the shunned, green-skinned Elphaba and Ariana Grande as the vacuously beautiful Galinda/Glinda (for those who haven’t seen it she changes her name halfway through).

Yes, this story of self-acceptance and female empowerment is led by two impossibly honed, full-lipped and sharp-cheekboned leads, but the entertainment industry has always liked to have its cake and not eat it. The set pieces and the overarching design are smashing.

But this Wicked is also emblematic of the timidity and the bloat afflicting film and TV product right now. Here’s a multiply proven intellectual property, a 21-year-old hit musical based on a successful 1995 book inspired by the iconic 1939 film of a popular 1900 novel.

So what do the producers do? Split it into two parts, the first of which runs a full hour longer than The Wizard of Oz, but ends after the stage musical’s signature midway anthem, Defying Gravity. When Erivo or Grande hit yet another sustained high note, I imagine even the superfans wish they’d get a move on.

Anyway: the plot. Hated even by her father Elphaba is sent to Shiz College (a cross between a six-star Gulf spa hotel and an acid trip) as ward to her disabled sister. There, her nascent magical ability is noticed by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, gruff and speak-singing like Rex Harrison). Although they dislike each other on sight she becomes roommate to Grande’s privileged, pretty, pink-clad Galinda, who’s majoring in hair-tossing and eyelash-batting.

And, well, that’s about it for two hours. There’s a subplot about how Oz’s talking animals are being erased from public life, but it doesn’t gain much traction. Jonathan ‘Bridgerton’ Bailey turns up to steal a couple of scenes – and a dance number set in a library seemingly made of rotating lock tumblers – as “Winkie Prince” Fiyero, then fades out again. I’m honestly not making this up.

Mostly it’s just close-ups of Erivo and Grande glowering at each other, the former expressing fathomless hurt, the latter wittily giving bottomless stupidity, before one or other bursts into another of Schwartz’s funny or heart-clutching songs. Galinda’s Popular, done as a showy Vaudevillian routine, is a high point.

The background is always busy, the Technicolor palette harks back to the 1939 film, and the steampunk-fairytale production design is always gorgeous, particularly the enameled Art Deco clockwork train that takes the girls to an onion-domed Emerald City.

Once we’re there, Jeff Goldblum seems to put less energy into his supporting role as the Wizard than was expended in writing his paycheque (there are also cameos by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, Broadway’s original witchy pair, as an Easter egg for the nerds).

The injection of jeopardy, via spells and explosions and flying monkeys as Elphaba realises her power and her vulnerability, comes too late to animate matters. Suddenly it’s over. Or, in the ominous words on screen: “To be continued.”

In some ways Chu’s version mitigates the irksome, eyes-aloft, this-is-my-moment self-consciousness of the big numbers in the stage show. But I suspect it will join the list of modern film adaptations of musicals – Phantom, Chicago, Sweeney Todd – chiefly loved by a fanatical core. Now you’ll have to excuse me, there are some people at my door and they seem to have a burning witches' broom…

In cinemas from Friday

Wicked - UK premiere

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