FILM OF THE WEEK: Wicked: For Good - Reviewed by Roe McDermott

The first Wicked film wowed audiences with its effervescent colour palette, buoyant choreography and thrill of seeing two powerhouse performers find an electric rhythm together. That said, it did leave many wondering whether its story ever truly needed to be halved. Wicked: Part I justified the decision with ease, charging ahead with such warmth, propulsion and visual delight that any doubts about the bifurcation seemed quaint by the time ‘Defying Gravity’ sent the curtain down. Wicked: For Good, unfortunately, inherits the structural burden that was always lying in wait, trudging through the narrative’s predetermined beats with the fatigued gait of a story that has already spent its brightest energy. Though the film’s virtues are real, the slog becomes harder to ignore.

The story picks up in the immediate aftermath of Elphaba’s airborne escape, following her attempt to defend Oz’s oppressed animals as the Wizard’s regime tightens its grip through fear, spectacle and propaganda, while Glinda, newly elevated and increasingly complicit, convinces herself that maintaining the façade of goodness is the safest path. As Elphaba becomes a symbol of resistance and Glinda becomes the polished face of a corrupt administration, their once-unlikely friendship is strained across political fault lines, romantic entanglements and the creeping inevitability of the story we know must be told, all as Oz fractures under the weight of its own illusions.

Wicked:For Good arrives with the advantage of two leads who seem constitutionally incapable of giving anything less than their full emotional bandwidth. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande anchor this second chapter with performances of such clarity and commitment that when the movie wanders into its slacker stretches, their presence keeps the material alive. Even if two new songs – Elphaba’s ‘No Place Like Home’ and Glinda’s ‘The Girl In The Bubble’ - feel slight in construction, they at least tuck themselves neatly into the established musical vocabulary, never jarring and occasionally quite touching. The problem is that almost nothing around these performances matches their vigour. What was once a buoyant swirl of motion in Part 1 now feels like a stately procession. Characters drift around aimlessly while singing solo ballads, as if all the choreographic energy had been expended in the previous chapter. Then there's a lack of interesting staging, which makes the songs feel sluggish instead of building emotion.

The contrast is clearest in the second act, which settles into a muted shuffle. Group numbers that, in theory, should unleash the misplaced outrage of a populace, lose themselves in oddly anonymised stagings, draining the crowd scenes of the type of volatile crowd energy demonstrated in ‘No-One Mourns the Wicked.’ This feels particularly disappointing, given that the political themes of the second act are more pronounced, and very resonant: messages of standing firm in your principles, resisting deceitful authority and propaganda, confronting the absurdity of tyrants who rewrite truth while targeting the vulnerable  - all remain potent and uncomfortably familiar. (The film about a liar and conman in power having vulnerable communities rounded up and caged and attacking talking animals is released the same week a liar and conman in power is empowering ICE to round up citizens. He also silenced a female journalist asking about his ties to Epstein by saying “Quiet, piggy.” The parallels write themselves.)

The storytelling seems reluctant to let these ideas breathe, stuffing in extended backstories for Oz characters, adding bulk without meaning and glancing past the emotional pivots that might have built momentum. Erivo brings such astonishing force to every note that it is easy to forget how tough it is for a performer to calibrate shifts in character when a story has too many extra threads battling for space. She is genuinely remarkable - it’s no wonder she played Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, because that voice is nothing short of holy.

But the story’s pacing doesn’t quite let her differentiate between the wary but hopeful idealist of Part 1 from the embattled figure who has learned to inhabit the villainy assigned to her. Some of those beats, such as her decision to embrace the purpose found in being misunderstood, pass so quickly that one almost doubts that the filmmakers trusted their own material. A romantic subplot with Fieyro (Jonathan Bailey, lovely as the surprising moral foil to Glinda’s emotional cowardice, but underused) also feels unearned.  The chemistry between he and Elphaba isn't given enough time to simmer into something convincing. It’s here that the impact of dividing the film in two is deeply felt: on stage, we move from immersion in the fun and the romance immediately into deeper connections and divisions, but after a year, For Good needed to spend a bit more time reminding us of these relationships before diving into doom, division and sweeping gestures.

Yet it would be unfair to pretend the film has no magic, because when the final duet arrives, and ‘For Good’ begins its gentle, aching ascent, the movie remembers what it has been trying to say all along: that friendship - tested, reshaped and occasionally broken - is the story’s true lodestar. The song remains a thing of uncomplicated beauty, catching the arc of these women’s journey with a simplicity the rest of the film forgets it is allowed to possess. The songs this time may not be the ones you hum on your way home, and the spectacle may feel softened around the edges, but when the film finds its emotional centre it does indeed sing, and for a brief stretch the clutter falls away.

Directed by Jon M. Chu. Written by Winnie Holzman, Winnie Holzman & Dana Fox, based on the musical stage play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, from the novel by Gregory Maguire. Cinematography by Alice Brooks. Edited by Myron Kerstein.
Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum. 137 mins

• In cinemas now. Watch the trailer below