Enchanting and Exhausting

Wicked makes a charming but bloated film.

JON M. CHU has made one of the great musicals of our time, a phantasmagorical coming-of-age journey into a land of wide-eyed enchantment, wild dance moves, and colorful magic bubbles. That movie was 2010's Step Up 3D. Although dismissed by critics at the time, the dance-off sequel feels more like a masterpiece with each passing year, an early demonstration of the director's ability to spin worlds through movement and mood. These talents also served Chu well for his 2021 adaptation of In the Heights, whose rough-edged musical numbers had a tumbledown poignancy.

Chu's latest film, Wicked, is pretty good too, though one misses the sheer attack of his earlier work. A massive (some might say swollen) spectacle, it cleaves the hit Broadway musical in two with the movie's finale coming at the sole break in the play. Act Two onstage is quite a bit shorter than Act One, so one suspects Wicked: Part Two will require new numbers and plot threads to match the first half's heft. It would be a feat: This Wicked is huge in every way. Fans of the show will likely adore it, but it only sporadically achieves the demented energy that marks Chu's best films and makes the great modern movie musicals sing.