A very long 'Wicked' goodbye

 

   Fans probably will differ, but I've had enough. Four hours and 58 minutes of Wicked -- the popular play divided into two halves for the big screen -- is more than the material can easily support. 

  Sure, Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba work with palpable commitment and fervor, and, yes, director John M. Chu and his crew haven't skimped on production value with sets that may be theme-park worthy.

  Still the finale, proves less than grand.

  I was lukewarm but respectful toward Wicked (2024), and, like most critics, I was impressed by Erivo's captivating performance. The first movie even ended with enough momentum to suggest that Wicked: For Good might outdo the first installment.

  Alas, For Good drags enough to tamp down some of the pleasure in watching Glinda, The Good Witch, and Elphaba, a.k.a., the Wicked Witch of the West, battle for the future of Oz. 

  Be assured, though, Elphaba retains her against-the-grain posture. She wants to expose the fraudulence of the storied Wizard, played here by Jeff Goldblum without benefit of much winking humor.

  The movie generates little doubt that the feuding Glinda and Elphaba will eventually acknowledge their lasting bond. Ergo, For Good feels as if it's working through two hours and 18 minutes of maneuvering to reach its inevitable conclusion.

   Some of the charm has faded. In this edition, the now subjugated animals of Oz have an unimpressive CGI aura. Supporting actors Marissa Bode, as Nessarose Thropp, and Ethan Slater, as Munchkin Boq, reach the screen in the flesh, but to limited avail.

   For Good treats the arrival of Dorothy as a marginal event, although it provides origin stories for Tin Man and Scarecrow, characters that figure in the plot, but don't have much dramatic or comic resonance.

    Fans already know that Grande and Erivo have the chops to sell popular tunes such as No Good Deed and For Good.  New songs include No Place Like Home and The Girl in the Bubble. They didn't leave me humming on the way out of the theater.

    Oops. I almost forgot. John Bailey returns as heartthrob Fiyero, whose fate involves straw and an unexpected (if you're unfamiliar with the material) shift in affections. 

    Michelle Yeoh reprises her role as Madame Morrible. Her one big scene stirs up a storm that could have found a home in a disaster movie.

     The Wicked phenomenon hinges on upsetting expectations created by familiarity with The Wizard of Oz: Glinda retains her bitchy qualities, the Wicked Witch earns our sympathy, and the story delivers a message about how lying, self-serving leaders can manipulate a gullible populace into compliance.

      Fan involvement with these characters may be strong enough to keep For Good's box office solid. Costumes and Wicked-inspired hairdos were in evidence at a preview screening, and it would be unfair to tag For Good as a flop. 

     As I've said, Grande and Erivo know how to hold the screen, and Chu created a few high points that had the audience applauding.

    But if I find myself looking at my watch during a film, I take it as a sign that I wasn't being transported into a world of enchantment -- no matter how much the movie seemed to be insisting on it.

       Oh well, I don't know if there are plans for a movie in which the once-frightening flying monkeys (yes, they return, too) assert their independence and conquer what's left of our rapidly foundering planet. Maybe they'd do a better job than we have.

A popular musical reaches the screen

 

     Staged and restaged, Wicked has sustained an extraordinary level of popularity since the show debuted on Broadway in 2003. Wicked features songs with lyrics fans probably can recite from heart and its dancing goes heavy on stomping. Still playing on Broadway, Wicked has chalked up about $3.2 billion in ticket sales.

   Small wonder then that Wicked finally has made it to the screen with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in starring roles and a ton of emphatically expressed production value that sometimes seems to stand on equal footing with the main event, a story about two of Oz's fabled witches.

   Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) adds little by way of  nuance or depth to obviously stated themes about  racial prejudice, bullying, and sneaky authoritarian rule.

   Instead, Chu leans into colorful images, dazzling special effects, and the undeniable commitment of both stars. Much of the time, the combination works to create an unabashedly showy entertainment that may not rank among the great movie musicals, but has enough frivolous  kick to click. 

   Think of Wicked as a vibrantly ornate helping of fan service that may also will appeal to those who’ve never seen the stage production — and who welcome the movie's glossy references to trendy notions, adapted from the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

   The story revolves around the polarity separating two witches, Glinda (Grande) and Elphaba (Erivo). Glinda, of course, is the good witch, who in this telling is more popular than virtuous. Born with green skin, Elphaba is the scorned victim of bigotry who'll become the Wicked Witch. 

   The story's best twist: Elphaba's the character we root for.

   Wicked stands as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, complete with origin stories about the Cowardly Lion and the creepy flying monkeys that have frightened several generations of children. But mostly the movie is a pop cultural lollipop, much of it set at Shiz University, a Hogwarts-like institution where students learn the art of sorcery. 

    Glinda arrives at the school ready to become the Big Girl on Campus — conceited, bratty, blonde, insensitive, and addicted to the color pink.  Accustomed to rejection, Elphaba never applied to the school, but her supernatural talents are recognized by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), the school’s Head Mistress. 

   Peter Dinklage gives voice to Doctor Dillamond, the goat who serves as Shiz’s last remaining animal professor. A history teacher, Dillamond creates sympathy for animals, who are being stripped of the power of speech for reasons revealed in the movie's second half.

    Jonathan Bailey provides hunk appeal as Fiyero, a prince who attracts the attention of both Elphaba and Glinda and who might not be quite the empty vessel he initially seems.

   Ethan Slater portrays Bog Woodman, the resident Munchkin who crushes on Glinda but reluctantly agrees to date Elphaba's sister (Marissa Bode), a Shiz student born with a disease that keeps her in a wheelchair. 

   Grande finds comic and bitchy notes in Glinda’s flighty personality, and Erivo makes a moving Elphaba, an intelligent young woman fighting a battle with anger and resentment on one side and natural empathy on the other. The song, I'm Not That Girl, highlights her personality in an assertive but mildly mournful way.

   Eventually, the plot contrives to send Elphaba and Glinda to the Emerald City for an audience with the Wizard (an amusing Jeff Goldblum.)

   Chu and his team go all in during the Emerald City finale, concluding the movie on a soaring (literally) note, the culmination of what already has been a mega-display of production design.

   I’m not pressing Wicked into my book of cherished movie memories, but I had the feeling that this big-screen musical wasn't intended for me. Put another way: Not exactly my cup of tea, but Wicked had its pleasures -- most stemming from Grande and especially Erivo, who gives the movie a welcome helping of humanity.

    A note: Even though the movie runs for a sometimes taxing two hours and 41 minutes, the story is slated to conclude with a second helping next November.  Maybe I'm jaded, but I can't help wondering why an already lengthy running time wasn't sufficient. Guess we'll find out.

  

 

'Chaos Walking:' A run might have been better

 

   First, a quick look at the world of Chaos Walking, a futuristic story about warring deep-space colonists that trips over one of its central conceits. In Chaos Walking, men can hear each other's thoughts, a power achieved upon arrival on this distant planet.

   Adapting a YA novel by Patrick Ness, director Doug Limon allows us to hear the thoughts of the male characters who live in the Prentisstown colony. Not only does the collective babble create confusion, it adds little by way of interest because so many of the thoughts we hear tend to be obvious or repetitive.

  Having been raised in Prentisstown, Todd (Tom Holland) only knows the world of men. The town's women all died shortly after Todd's birth: Todd has bought the official line, which insists the women were killed by the Spackle, the original residents of this unnamed planet.

   When we meet him, Todd mostly accepts the local philosophy, a kill-or-be-killed ethos that has turned Prentisstown into a grim dystopian outpost. Todd lives with his father Ben (Damian Bichir) and accepts the iron-fisted discipline of Prentisstown's mayor (Mads Mikkelsen). 

  Todd's world changes when Viola (Daisy Ridley) arrives on the planet after the crash of her spaceship during an interplanetary scouting mission dispatched by a larger vessel.

  Most of the story puts Todd and Viola on the run, as they try to find a way to signal Viola's mothership so that it won't leave her behind.

   Todd's dog Manchee tags along. Happily, there's no suggestion that anyone can read Manchee's thoughts or that Manchee can penetrate anyone else's mind. 

    Having never seen a woman before, Todd's thoughts often put him in an embarrassing position vis-a-vis Viola, who can hear his thoughts.  

    Men, by the way, can't hear women's thoughts, thus leading the movie toward a limp metaphor about gender differences: Transparent creatures that they are, men can't hear women. Some of the men are deeply opposed to any female intrusion into their private worlds.

   The supporting cast proves largely irrelevant. David Oyelowo portrays Aaron, a censorious preacher who occasionally pops up to orate. Cynthia Erivo's Hildy leans another colony, one that still has women and is far more peaceable than Prentisstown.

    Exoticism proves in short supply. The planet on which the movie takes place looks pretty much like Earth and the various encounters that Todd and Viola have with others aren't all that intriguing. The action (a white-water episode, for example) seems pretty familiar, as well.

     The chemistry between Holland and Ridley doesn't exactly sizzle, and Mikkelsen's low-key villainy breaks little new ground.

   Aside from the discovery of a vast, previously crashed ship, Chaos Walking lacks sci-fi scale. It almost feels as if the characters are playing at inhabiting a new planet without ever having left Earth.

   I've read that The Knife of Never Letting Go is the first in the Chaos Walking series.  My commercial instincts are extremely fallible, so take this with a grain of salt: It's difficult for me to imagine that more Chaos Walking movies loom.

Harriet Tubman reaches the screen

Cynthia Erivo gives one of the year's most compelling performances in director Kasi Lemmons' Harriet.

In Harriet, actress Cynthia Erivo comes across as a determined female warrior who battles the evils of slavery, freeing as many enslaved people as she can. With a face full of fury, Erivo creates a portrait of flinty resolve and unshakable faith. Tubman, who escaped slavery at the age of 27, became a "conductor" -- someone who guided the enslaved to freedom -- on the Underground Railroad. She already had won her freedom but wasn't satisfied, not when so many others were left behind to suffer.

As directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou and Talk to Me), Harriet paints a portrait of a woman who came to realize she had only one choice: Be free or die. Once Tubman decided that she'd rather be dead than enslaved, everything else followed.

In Maryland, Tubman was known as Minty. She grew up on a plantation and watched a sister being sold away from the family, an event that permanently scarred her, as did the lashes from the whips of slave masters.

Determined to flee, Tubman made a journey of 100 miles -- from Maryland to Philadelphia. She traveled alone.

Erivo creates a portrait of a woman possessed. Tubman was struck in the head as a child, an event that some say accounted for the religious visions that she claimed to have. Erivo's fierce portrayal leaves little doubt that if Tubman said she talked to God, you'd best believe her. She's like an American Joan of Arc. Employing a different religious reference, frustrated plantation owners dubbed her "Moses."

Part action hero and part American icon, the Harriet that emerges on screen kicks butt and, yes, that's satisfying, given the people whose butt she's kicking. A born leader, she refuses to allow anyone (even the politically cautious abolitionists she meets in Philadelphia) to define her.

The evil white slavers find their fullest representation in a character named Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn),
a severe slave master who won't rest until he returns Tubman to his plantation. At one point, he hires black slave hunters to help him in his quest. Gideon's mother (Jennifer Nettles) can be even worse, a hysterical woman who sees her beloved plantation sinking deeper into debt.

The movie's Philadelphia setting produces the movie's strongest supporting characters. Janelle Monae plays a woman who owns a boarding house and Leslie Odom Jr. portrays an abolitionist who introduces Tubman to the Underground Railroad. At various points in the movie, Clarke Peters appears as Tubman's father.

Lemmons sticks pretty much to surface, and, at times, Harriet seems more of an action movie than it needs to be. Put another way, Harriet sometimes feels more attuned to the demands of contemporary moviegoing than to rhythms that would have been more reflective of the period in which Tubman lived.

With Harriet, what you see is what you get and the movie emerges as a kind of primer on Tubman's life that's built around a compelling performance. I agree with those who think it should have been more than that, but Lemmons' big-screen biography sets its own terms and lives within them.