'Wicked' proved me wrong

I was never a huge fan of Wicked as a musical. I’ve seen a touring production of it, and while it was an entertaining night at the theater, I felt like it only had a handful of truly great songs (and really none in the second act), but mostly that it couldn’t hold a candle to any of the other major-sensation musicals of the modern era. (The Lion King, The Producers, Hairspray, Hamilton, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, Waitress, Rent, etc.)

I’m a massive fan of musical theatre and have been since at least middle school (although I’ve loved movie musicals my entire life … mostly of the animated variety when I was a child), and Wicked never rated as high for me as any of the above, or on a level of stuff like Sweeney Todd, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, The Last Five Years, A Chorus Line, and on and on.

So when the Wicked movie was announced, I was far from convinced. I didn’t have any issues with the Ariana Grande casting or anything, I just didn’t know if it would necessarily translate all that well to the big screen, and I was already lukewarm on the play. When all the drama happened with Grande and her weird smalltoothed Spongebob boyfriend and him Risking It All on the set of the movie, that weird little goblin entered my goof repertoire permanently. And when the announced runtime was revealed to be longer than the entirety of the runtime of the play, including intermission — FOR ONLY THE MATERIAL IN THE FIRST ACT OF THE PLAY, SINCE WICKED HAS BEEN SPLIT INTO TWO PARTS — well, my stink-o-meter got pinned into the red.

I didn’t think it would be as bad as Joker 2 or anything, but I was side-eyeing this thing heavily. I also knew I would almost certainly see it in the theater, because it seemed like something I could potentially take my kid to, despite the extreme runtime. (He loves the original Wizard of Oz, and has watched it in one sitting multiple times at this point.) As any parent knows, kid-acceptable films during the bleak two weeks off from school during the holidays are more precious than gold, and you can’t eat popcorn during “gold.”

On Thursday, we did in fact take our five-year-old to see a noon screening of Wicked at one of those movie theaters where the seats recline and you can get food served to you by a waiter while you watch the movie.

And folks, I’m thrilled to announce that my hunches were all wrong. Wicked (part one) is fantastic.

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