‘Wicked: for Good’ Isn’t Really

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in a poster for Wicked: for Good.

Prolific Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz made me his fan for life in recent news reports when he gave Trump the finger for self-renaming the Kennedy Center in his own honor, leading Schwartz to refuse to perform there.

But my forgiving feeling can only go so far when contemplating the new movie musical he co-wrote the book for as well as composing some new music. Right now, it is flooding movie theaters as the cleverly named Wicked: for Good, while it is actually the second half of a musical that was swallowed in one bite on Broadway in 2003.

The first Wicked movie dominated movie screens around Thanksgiving of 2004, and the Wicked: for Good finale came into attention Thanksgiving 2025, is still running in movie theaters and is likely to be heard from during awards season.

Why divide in two what Broadway ate in one meal? The filmmakers claim they split it up to expand character relationships, but I gently suggest that is public relations nonsense. It was mainly to extend the box office excitement when in reality it should have made the public think twice about spending the money.

The new film does throw the complete “Wizard of Oz” book series of characters into the mix atop the familiar gatherings of movie one – except this time Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Man, etc., are fleeting presences who have the wrong handle on what’s happening. They are seduced into trying to destroy Elphaba with her green skin and reputation as the wicked witch.

Yet as fans of the musical well know, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is hardly the wicked witch, and her friend and rival, Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande), is in an internal fight to be good. This time Michelle Yeoh expands as the real nasty witch (Madame Morrible) — she has some acting to do besides looking evil — and Jeff Goldblum as the con-man Wizard has dry humor to unveil as well as some nifty song and dance.

But none of the characters really advance in depth, nor does the social message. The script is in an obvious frenzy to find ways to extend the story. Scene changes abound like a gingerbread house gone mad.

What the film does have going for it is how director Jon M. Chu makes all the production money visible and visual. The entire land of Oz proves a mechanical wonder of set pieces and bubble effects, not to mention animal creatures that sigh, moan and swarm. The costumes are great, the colors are luminous and the number of singing extras rivals the Hollywood of old.

Schwartz has written a couple of new songs, and the soundtrack certainly echoes the musical’s gigantic hits – “Popular” and “Defying Gravity” – plus making us musically wedded to “Changed for Good.” He does nice if not memorable work providing a new song for each of the leads – “No Place Like Home” for Erivo as Elphaba and “The Girl in the Bubble” for Grande. Grande’s lyric soprano soars on extended notes while Erivo is both earthier and equally soaring – I remain impressed by her singing range plus her expressive face that doesn’t need that green skin to make an acting impact. Grande’s simpering act sort of bores me.

Because so much of the cost is so visible, the whole event is manufactured eye candy for the children while the orchestral smoothness will impress the adults. The plot plays with the earlier ideas of animal rights and the Wizard as a fascist, but any meaningful consequences vanish in the steady-cam, rows of tulips, animals real and fabricated, and flying sequences.

Cerebrally, it is a disappointment and so locked-in to showing off that, unlike the stage version, the imagination can’t soar into our own dreams and wishes.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.