This film adaptation to the immensely successful stage musical was a cultural phenomenon in of itself. Given that I will likely never get to see the musical itself in this lifetime, I decided to watch this despite being doubtful that I’d like it. Indeed, I found this to be an overly long, boring and mostly vapid spectacle. Sure, it’s colorful, visually imaginative and is basically wall-to-wall music. But the singing to plot ratio is way off and too much of the time, the teenage popularity plot matters more than the saving Oz plot. I liked the flying at the end and that’s about it.
Elphaba is the eldest daughter of the governor of Munchkinland. Secretly a product of an affair between her mother and a traveling salesman, she is immediately rejected for her skin green and is prone to uncontrollable bursts of magic. By contrast, her father dotes on her younger sister Nessarose who is paraplegic. When they come of age, Nessarose is enrolled into Shiz University and Elphaba accompanies her. But the school’s Dean of Sorcery Studies, Madame Morrible notices Elphaba’s magical potential and insists that she enrolls as well. Also attending is Galinda Upland, a beautiful and popular girl who longs to study sorcery. Morrible forces the two to be roommates causing them to be first enemies and then friends. Their relationship is further complicated by the arrival of the handsome prince Fiyero Tigelaar. One of professors at the school is Dr. Dillamond, a talking goat. Elphaba is one of the few who is kind to Dillamond and soon learns that animals of Oz are losing the ability to speak and are being persecuted.
As this falls squarely into the trend of rehabilitating villain characters, there are no surprises and the story follows a predictable set of rails. Instead what is more daunting is the setting itself, a wondrous world of landscapes seemingly composed of many countries and inhabited by strange humans alongside talking animals. It’s very strange in this context that Elphaba’s green skin is even worth remarking upon, let alone being cause for prejudice. To anyone who’s seen The Wizard of Oz, it isn’t surprising either that the amazing sights are all clever mechanical constructs and Elphaba alone is capable of true magic. I do like this version of Glinda who is vain and cares more about seen to be good than actually being good. The issue is that the film takes a good chunk of time to introduce the world and the characters. Mostly this is because of the very long song and dance sequences. They’re so long that every time there’s a pause, I think that’s it thank goodness but then it picks up and goes on. I’m doubly flummoxed that the songs themselves are all of the plot and character development we get. So when Glinda sings about her decision to help make Elphaba more popular, I expected that would be followed by a scene of her doing just that. But no, that sequence itself is the entire arc.
To my mind, the film only really gets going once Elphaba learns about the animals being oppressed. At least then there are some real stakes and it’s not just about being popular and accepted in school. The climax is decently exciting too as Elphaba unleashes her powers. Unfortunately there’s a whole lot of tiresome fluff we need to sit through to get to that point and it’s just not worth it. The world is incoherent, the story too predictable and the characters too silly. Nothing here feels real at all and so I can’t muster the effort to care about any of it. I’d concede that this might well be an excellent attempt to convey the artistic sensibilities and dynamics of an animated film into live-action, but it’s still yucky for me. I’m never going to watch the follow-up so I spoiled myself on the ending. The plot points it hits aren’t bad but I notice that it didn’t do quite so well both commercially and critically.
Maybe the sheer spectacle of watching this live on-stage would make up for the mediocre songs and story. The voices of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo seem to mesh rather well together here but on the whole this was a huge waste of time for me.