A Wicked (2024) Review

Born with fetal alcohol syndrome from a philandering mother who drank green potions, Elphaba experiences prejudice and bullying from the queer diversity people at her Harry Potter school. Her sister is disabled in a steampunk wheelchair because their father was worried she too would come out green and fed their mother "milk weeds" (?) which killed her and made the sister premature. The Harry Potter school cooperates with new antisemitic legislation against animal teachers and Elphaba's favorite goat teacher gets hate speech written on his board before being arrested. This turns Elphaba into an animal rights activist but because she is so good at magic the Wizard of Oz wants her to read the triangle book, which turns out to cause monkeys to grow wings to be used for increased surveillance. Elphaba does a January 6 and her Asian diversity teacher turns out to be bad, saying on an Oz megaphone that her green skin physiognomy is an outward manifestation of her evil. Elphaba flies on her broomstick and sings Defying Gravity which I know from the Miranda Sings Netflix special where Miranda sings it.

This movie pulls down your defenses immediately with how goofy and bizarre and fun it is and tells you to take it or leave it. The whole thing is awesomely earnest and nerdy and and the music itself feels ancient, every time someone is about to sing a song it feels like you're at the middle school talent show and the teacher just pressed play on the karaoke cassette. It's just incredibly unconcerned with seeming cool or ironic about this bizarre material, and the whole thing is full of the most busted theater kids imaginable, most of them playing bullies and villains. Ariana Grande does her weird transatlantic Miss Piggy thing and her thinness it truly shocking - this must be what a thin person on Ozempic looks like, and I haven't seen anyone that anorexic in a movie since the last time Angelina Jolie acted. She's very good in it but Cynthia Erivo is Streisand level great, and it's really funny seeing the black nerd girl with glasses archetype of the 2010s painted green wearing a witch costume. The outfits are beautiful, intricate, and over the top, everything is colorful and not soulless like the dark reboot 2010s. The prince is hot and has a big ass which which they shoot up close. I loved it and thought it ruled.

By @lotus_point on Twitter