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Wicked Is As Enchanting As It Is Exhausting
Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of the hit musical has charm, but the bloat is inescapable.
That’s pretty much where the original Wizard of Oz left matters, but soon, Ariana Grande’s Glinda the Good, Elphaba’s presumed mortal enemy, floats down in her pink bubble to recount the story of how she and the Witch knew each other back when they were young students at Shiz University. Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, on which the show is loosely based, was written not long after the first Gulf War, and the author has said he was partly inspired by Western press reports repeatedly comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler as a justification for invading Iraq. The film’s performance of “What Is This Feeling?”, a showstopper in which our two heroes express their initial loathing of each other, seems to glide effortlessly from late-night split-screen bickering to a rollicking, school-wide extravaganza where everything becomes rhythm: click-clacking silverware, twiddling fingers, stomping feet, rolling chairs, and screeching tables.
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