Wicked revels in the glory of frenemies

The female frenemy plot takes oft-hidden tensions and makes them larger than life for viewers' enjoyment and catharsis

- Jennifer Weiner

NEW YORK - When Glinda and Elphaba, the leads of the new movie adaptation of Wicked, clap eyes on each other, it is loathe at first sight. Glinda shrieks, but charmingly. In response, Elphaba smirks and asks if she has something in her teeth.

Glinda, short for Galinda, played by American singer-actress Ariana Grande, is pale and pretty in pink. Elphaba, played by British singer-actress Cynthia Erivo, is glowering in glasses and green skin.

"No, I am not seasick. Yes, I have always been green. And, no, I did not eat grass as a child," she says.

And right then, you know where you are - Act 1 of a classic frenemy love story.

These two young women, classmates and roommates - one giggly, glamorous and beloved; the other studious, plain and lonely - seem destined to despise each other forever, or at least until graduation.

But if you are a connoisseur of this particular genre, there is no question what happens next. Glinda could be Vivian Kensington clocking Elle Woods on the quad in the movie Legally Blonde (2001) or Cher Horowitz when she first sees Tai Frasier in the film Clueless (1995).

Swap green skin for an off-trend outfit, set your story in the merry old land of Oz instead of Harvard or a Beverly Hills high school, and you have Wicked, a frenemy story nonpareil, offering the promise of a platonic love that will leave you better than you have been, changed inside and out for good.

And who could resist that? In a typical boy-meets-girl story, a woman wishes, hopes and prays that a man will fall for her.

Three hundred pages, 90 minutes or eight streaming episodes later, he informs her that she has bewitched him body and soul or that he loves her just as she is. Regardless of how many wobbles there may be along the way, viewers know where they are going to end up.