Wicked Movie

The marketing has had the opposite effect on me than intended. I feel bored of it already! I open my cupboard and it’s on the bloody orange squash even!

A lot of 3 and 4 stars from the main news outlets. This quote in the whatsonstage review worries me...

The emotional “oomph” of “Defying Gravity” is dampened by extended passages of dialogue between verses, so there’s slightly less of the heady euphoria that you get at the close of act one on stage.

Have we had a date for part 2 yet?

I still find it a bit odd that the length of the film is almost the same as the whole of the stage show even though the film is just half of the story presumably ending with Defying Gravity.

2hr 40m may well be on the indulgent side, but you can't imagine the underdeveloped dialogue that rattles through to keep the stage show on course would fly (pun intended!) in a cinematic environment.

I'm assuming they are just padding out the script, and I know that Glinda's friends have a more high profile presence.

I think it’s faithful in that everything you’d expect to be in there is but then there’s additional material on top. Every song on the cast recording is longer than the Original Broadway Recording with One Short Day being double the length.

What do the say about the colour grading? Has my fear of it being too muted come true?

3 stars from the stage, I think 3 from the bbc too who recommended cutting nessarose.

4 from digital spy and WOS.

Cutting Nessarose would completely change the plot, seems like an odd suggestion from the BBC.

I’ve seen some incredibly baffling ones but this is by far the most. It does not read like a 3 star review at all. Everything is so positive except the grading.

I have found generally that the scoring is all over the places with a few of these. Some marking it high in stars but being quite critical and then others marking it low but then being very positive. Perhaps representative of quite an inconsistent experience? Of maybe the critics are just generally struggling to assess it?

I’m also finding the massive difference in opinions very interesting and unusual - some saying the leads are miscast, and others saying that they’re incredible, some saying it looks too fake, others very real, some saying saying it whizzes by and others that it drags. It’s rare I see a film where almost every aspect people disagree on so broadly from one review to another.

The Telegraph is unimpressed and gives two stars. Warning: There's a spoiler in it for a cameo, though they actually seem to make a good point regarding that cameo!

I wish that we knew whether each reviewer actually knows the stage version. Some moments/songs/characters might seem easy to cut if you don't know how it pays off in act two.

Some reviews from people who have not seen the musical