Review: WICKED

       In 1906, Chester Gillette killed his 20 year old pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, by hitting her over the head with an oar or a tennis racket on a boat, knocking her into Big Moose Lake, New York, where she drowned. Chester was found guilty for the murder and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. This was such a sensational case that Theodore Dreiser wrote a fictionalized version of it in An American Tragedy in 1925. The crazy thing about the novel is that after reading it you actually feel sympathy for Clyde Griffiths, the fictionalized Chester Gillette character. Sympathy for a cold-blooded murderer...who killed his pregnant girlfriend? Blasphemy! But it's true. The idea behind the novel Wicked, written by Gregory Maguire and published in 1995, takes a similar tack; find an infamous villain, and try to make sense out of the evil behind the villainous acts. Nurture vs. nature. How does evil start? Was the Wicked Witch of the West always an evil, nefarious bitch? Or did something set her off? Was she, gulp, once good? Can we actually find sympathy in an evil witch?

    Wicked was eventually turned into a hugely successful Broadway musical in 2003, and now, finally, 21 years later, Part 1 of the movie version has come out. 

    The basic premise of the film is we go through the history of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, and Galinda, who eventually turns out to be Glinda the Good Witch. The film starts with Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, as a child, and then eventually she heads to a school not unlike Hogwarts. This is where she meets Galinda, played by Ariana Grande. I suppose if you loved the Harry Potter book or movie scenes at Hogwarts, you might be intrigued by this candy-colored school filled with talking animals and a magic teacher. Unfortunately, none of the school sequences are interesting, fresh, or exciting. I think even Universal, that made the movie, realized this, because the last TV commercial I saw only featured scenes from the end of the film, when the Wicked and Good Witch finally meet the Wizard of Oz and belt out the famous song, "Defying Gravity." Maybe Universal thinks everyone saw the musical and already knows the story, because that short commercial literally gives away the movie's ending and shows the final scene. 

    Wicked the musical is still not on TKTS TKTS, the discount Broadway ticket booth in Times Square, which means it's still a show that sells out 21 years later. When it opened, it had famous stars like Idina Menzel, Joel Grey, and Kristen Chenoweth. Plus everyone loves The Wizard of Oz, the most famous movie ever made. And, of course, family friendly shows like The Lion King and Wicked seem to last forever on Broadway. But is the Broadway musical better than the film? Because the film is a colorful, glossy mess.

    The big problem with the film is that it was filmed entirely on green screen sets. That means it looks more like a cartoon or video game than a film. Any kind of magical wonder or awe is completely lost in this special f/x overload. The other problem is that for a musical, there aren't any great dance scenes or great songs. Maybe on Broadway they came up with some good dance sequences, and perhaps seeing real actors belt out songs right in front of you is a better experience, but where are the ear worm songs? The catchy songs you can't get out of your head? All of the songs in this are mediocre and forgettable and everything just sounds like old, has-been 1950's show tunes. Granted, 2003 was before Hamilton, when finally a popular Broadway musical sounded different than something like Carousel. But even Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote musicals decades ago that didn't sound like they were stuck in old-school amber. 

    The big, famous song in the film (which, granted, is only Part 1, so maybe the second half features amazing song and dance scenes) is "Defying Gravity." Menzel and Chenoweth sang this on the Tony's the night Wicked won everything, so it must be the supposed "best" song in the show. While it's certainly a cathartic tune and a moment when the film finally gets going, it's not a particularly great song. It's decent. It also has the same problem a lot of the songs have; too many of the lyrics don't rhyme. Stephen Schwartz wrote the lyrics for the show. He's mostly known for writing the music for the Disney musicals that don't have good songs; Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also did music for The Prince of Egypt and Godspell. There's a good reason that Sondheim is famously a great writer of Broadway musicals and a master lyricist: he knows how to rhyme! Too many of the songs in Wicked are just lazily using people talking as a song. 'Defying' and 'Gravity' don't rhyme, plus they're two awkward words together. Making a celebrity sing it with instruments swelling in the background might make it sound halfway decent, but it doesn't make it good.

    Finally, after two plus hours at Hogwarts-lite, the main characters go to Oz and meet Jeff Goldblum, who plays the Wizard of Oz. And finally, the film comes to life. The ending is at least entertaining. Goldblum is great in this, as is Ariana Grande, who was born to be in a Broadway musical. Jonathan Bailey, as the new, rebel punk at school, Fiyero, is amusing. Michelle Yeoh, as the wizard teacher, seems to either be miscast or just out of her depth. Erivo, as Elphaba, is fine, although I'm baffled at all of the critics falling over saying how great she is in this. And while the story is just a take on The Wizard of Oz, I did like the fascist plot involving imprisoning talking animals. That's at least intriguing and something new.

    Early on the movie throws too much at you, there's too much going on. And when it finally settles into being a typical, school dramedy, it's same-old, been-there-done-that. When we get to the bread-and-butter, Wizard of Oz/Witch turns wicked by the end, the film becomes an entertainment, pop spectacle that's at least easy to watch. How on earth a 2 and half hour Broadway musical became a two part, 5 and a half hour film is beyond me, though. And in the end, the critics of the novel Wicked were right. Michiko Kakutani said of the book that Maguire "shows little respect for Baum's original story." So the Wicked Witch of the West, a green-skinned villain hell-bent on terrorizing a cute farm girl and her friends for no good reason, was really just a quiet, nice nerd contaminated and turned by the evils of society? Now that's even more far-fetched than a tornado that takes you to Munchkin land. **

    

    

    

Review: GLADIATOR 2

 

    The first Gladiator movie came out in 2000. Gladiator 2 just came out, 24 years later. Usually that would seem like a ridiculously long time for a sequel to come out, but thanks to streaming and "Peak TV," it seems like everything is continuing on years later. 

    I can't even remember everything that's been dusted off and returned, sometimes decades later, but it does seem like everything. I couldn't even fathom, years ago, that we'd ever see a new season of Twin Peaks, another go-around of The Dark Crystal, a new Willow, or a new Evil Dead. Those shows and movies seemed destined to be in the history bin, yet they returned, decades later. And those are just the ones I actually was fans of back in the day. There's been a new Karate Kid, a new Beetlejuice, a new Roseanne, a new Full House, a new Frasier. Is nothing sacred? It's actually getting ridiculous. Gladiator actually won the Oscar for Best Picture, and seems to be a popular movie, so it never really disappeared out of people's minds. The only reason it seemed to be that they never made a sequel earlier was because the main character, played by Russell Crowe, died in the movie. They couldn't really make a sequel unless it starred his ghost or other characters, and a prequel wouldn't make sense because he wasn't a gladiator yet. 24 years later they've finally found a solution by having Russell Crowe's character's son be the new gladiator. 

    The last time I actually watched the original Gladiator was probably in theaters in May of 2000. Considering it was named Best Picture at the Oscars, you'd expect that it was some great, dramatic, suspenseful, awesome film. It wasn't. The sequel isn't, either, although the action scenes and battle scenes are entertaining and exciting. 

    The basic plot has Paul Mescal playing Russell Crowe's son. He was sent away from Rome and is now married and living in North Africa. The Roman army shows up, led by Pedro Pascal, and there's a gigantic battle. Paul Mescal ends up a slave and is bought by Denzel Washington's character, who plays a seedy political player that has eyes on the Roman throne. Mescal becomes a gladiator in the Coloseeum and the rest is history.

    While there is no chariot race in this movie, everything else is pretty much what you expect. They've decided that everyone has attention deficit disorder now, so every battle is somewhat different. Mescal has to fight CGI monkeys in one battle. Another features a guy riding a rhino. There's a boat battle on a flooded Coloseeum. All of them are at least exciting to watch. The problem is when there is no action going on. Denzel Washington seems to be having a good time playing an Iago-like villain, manipulating everyone for his own good, but he doesn't really become the big bad until the end. Pedro Pascal doesn't have much to do in this film, and his wife, who is apparently Paul Mescal's secret mother, has a storyline that isn't all that interesting. The rulers of Rome in this film are two brothers who are more zany and goofy than threatening, thus negating any kind of hero/villain drama much needed for most of the film.   

    Gladiator 2 plays out exactly how you expect. There's the rousing gladiator speech at the end, the bloodthirsty Colosseum crowds that soon side with the gladiator, the Roman crowds walking around in white togas, the dungeons below the Colosseum filled with shadows and chains. 

    If you're looking for something fresh, amazing, new, and masterful, this movie certainly isn't it, but it gives you what you want; heads being lopped off, arrows through chests, knives in necks, arm to arm combat, knife to knife combat, sword to sword combat.

    Russell Crowe was a real movie star, mostly meaning he was famous and well known. Paul Mescal is a good actor but I doubt the majority of people even know who he is. That's a bit of a problem since he doesn't have that presence of big time movie star in a film that's big as life and super expensive. He pretty much gets swallowed up by it and falls into Denzel's shadow. 

    While the action sequences are good, this film pretty much falls into the same trap that all these re-boots and sequels decades later fall into; it's cool that they're back, we're all excited and glad to see them again but, honestly, they never turn out to be excellent, so what's the point? **1/2