With High Highs But Some Seriously Low Lows, “Wicked: For Good” Is A Mixed Bag

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Three things made the first “Wicked” so surprisingly good in my opinion; the acting and chemistry of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande; the impressive practical effects and direction of John Wu; and the banger and rousing soundtrack. But “Wicked: For Good” manages to fumble the bag on all three, while still doing juuust enough in all those aspects to not be a total dumpster fire.

Erivo, inexplicably, isn’t given as much to do here as in the first one, and is sort of underutilized. Grande is actually amazing here, and the highlight of the whole movie, asked to be more dramatic than comedic and honestly kind of nailing it. But the two barely share screen time together, and that aspect of the first one is sorely missed.

I remember going into the first “Wicked,” I was mad scared it would be a nightmare to look at with some pretty garish CGI, but it wasn’t actually so bad. But “For Good” has all those fears realized, going away from the practical and leaning way more on pretty gnarly CGI.

And finally, the music. The back of the play is weaker, so figured this just wouldn’t be as good as the first one, but like every song misses here, and the originals are just bad. The only song that manages to re-conjure the emotional heights of the first is the titular track in the movie’s climax, which is legit moving and emotional.

The finale in general is pretty damn good, as is Grande, and saves the movie from being outright bad, after an haphazard, episodic plot and disjointed tone. But it’s too little too late to keep things from being pretty average.