Review Summary: Don't be offended by my frank analysis, think of it as personality dialysis
Wicked was always going to be a popular movie, no matter how you spin it. Based on the defining Broadway musical of the 2000s, and boasting songs written by Stephen Schwartz (of
Godspell,
Pippin and
Pocahontas fame), the official film adaptation of
Wicked has spent a comical amount of time in development, with several attempts to translate the musical into a film throughout the 2000s and 2010s. To the surprise of exactly no one, it's the most popular film of the year, dwarfing any Marvel or superhero movie, and not just raking in lots of box office cash, but reports of theaters asking audience members not to sing along and let everyone enjoy the show, uncultured teenagers taking pictures during the movie (something that, for some reason, happened with last year's
Oppenheimer as well) have no doubt made the rounds on social media. The soundtrack has also dominated the streaming charts as well. Especially considering the fact that another musical came out a month ago and had the exact opposite thing happen (I’ll get to that movie's soundtrack, don't worry), this is both a surprise and not a surprise at the same time to me. And as a movie, well, it’s certainly one of the more enjoyable movies to have come out this year. Boasting lush visuals and great performances from its ensemble cast,
Wicked is an enjoyable enough distraction for three hours. So surely, you'd think that the soundtrack would be able to stand on its own, right? Yeah, about that…
Maybe I'm the problem here, but I like my musical soundtracks with a little more variety than what
Wicked has to offer. In the interest of full disclosure, I will point out that I have also seen the stage version once, and I remember having a similar criticism with the show's music: enjoyable in the moment, but doesn't leave much of an impression after the fact. Admittedly, it has also been a hot second since I’ve heard any of the stage versions of the show's music, so it’s hard to tell if this is a problem with the movie version of the music, or if that's just how the music is, but one of the biggest problems with the music is that… well, it just plain almost sounds all the same. Most of the songs adhere to the same formula and broadwayisms that litter each track, but considering Schwartz's track record, you'd think that he'd attempt to shake things up every now and then.
The best moments of the soundtrack are where the singers' natural talent are allowed to shine through. And indeed, when you have the fantastically talented Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the roles, there is a number of those moments to be found on the soundtrack. Ariana Grande allows her pep and her perkiness to show on tracks like “Popular", where her grasp on the slant rhymes and quick lyrics comes off as ever so natural. Her delivery of lines like “don't be offended by my frank analysis/think of it as personality dialysis" comes across so naturally that one could be mistaken for thinking it was an original song by her. Likewise, Cynthia Erivo's solo “I'm Not That Girl" is probably the highlight of the soundtrack, and a true testament to the fact that she was born for the role of Elphaba. But the biggest issue, and probably the biggest downfall of this recording, is that those moments don't make enough of the soundtrack. Most who have seen the movie probably will point to “Dancing Through Life" as a highlight of the movie, and indeed, in the context of the film it's a very entertaining moment. It's one of the most visually eye-catching moments in the film, involving the use of a rotary library and rotational bookshelves and ladders. And with regards to his acting, Jonathan Bailey is indeed a charming enough individual that his take on the role of Prince Fiyero is fantastic. But completely divorced from the film, it stands as a towering monument of everything wrong with modern movie musicals. For one, the autotune is heavy on this track, and several moments sound as if he just spoke into the microphone and it got autotuned into singing. But even ignoring that, his singing just completely lacks the ability to make me want to hear it for a whole song without the images of people dancing all over rotational bookshelves. It's competent, and that's enough. And even when the entire cast joins in to back him up, it just sounds competely anemic rather than the part where you expect to turn into a huge “moment" (not helping matters is that with it grouping the base song with the reprise, the song becomes a whopping 10 minutes long, meaning it becomes the centerpiece of the album, even despite the fact that it probably shouldn't).
In fact, let's talk about that last part that I mentioned too: the lack of any real “big" moments. There is no such thing as a small moment in
Wicked, and as consequence, there is also no such thing as a big moment. A song like “The Wizard and I" building up to the same kind of bombast displayed in the bigger moments of songs like “What is This Feeling” and “Dancing Though Life" robs even the smaller-by-design songs like “A Sentimental Man" or “I'm Not That Girl" of any potential power. The big moments of the cast joining in should make you picture a wide shot of a bunch of people singing and dancing in the fields of Oz, and even despite having seen the movie, all I can picture when I hear those moments in songs like “One Short Day" and “Dancing Through Life" is a bunch of singers iin a studio gathered around a microphone. The sad thing is, “One Short Day" is the closest this recording gets to standing on its own, and it indeed does become very interesting to listen to, especially when the Wickedly talented Adele Dazeem and her co-star from the broadway version, Kristen Chenoweth steal the whole song for themselves. But by the end of the whole affair, like the already mentioned “Dancing Through Life", all I just picture is a bunch of singers in a studio, gathered around a microphone.
Add to the fact that the film is only an adaptation of the first half of the musical, and you have yourself a package that requires itself to pad itself out to justify the price. You may or may not have already seen that I mentioned “Dancing Through Life" being nearly ten minutes long due to the fact that it packages the base song and the reprise that takes up the a good chunk of the dance scene in the middle of the film, and that's a trope that happens though a good number of the tracks. Opening number “No One Mourns the Wicked", climactic number “Defying Gravity" and other big numbers also use the movie's dialogue to pad themselves out longer, and I am sure this isn't a huge problem for someone who loved the movie more than I did, but when trying to listen to them as just songs, it's annoying. This is already a pet peeve of mine when it comes to Broadway soundtracks (if I want to hear all the dialogue, I'll go see the movie/show/whatever), and here it turns “Defying Gravity” into a choppy experience. Because nothing makes me want to see the movie again quite like having the momentum of the songs halted just to hear the movie dialogue, right?
In the film's final scene, Elphaba, from her broomstick, proudly declares “as somebody told me lately, everyone deserves the chance to fly". But the folks at Universal behind the release of the
Wicked soundtrack album clearly don't think that the it deserves said chance; rather, they choose to package a big glob of pink and green cheese in a way that is completely useless to anyone who isn't already a fan of the musical, and equally useless to people who are. Fans of the stage version already have a superior version of these songs to refer to, complete with the songs from the second half of the show that everyone else will, for some reason, apparently wait a whole year to hear worse versions of. But hey, who am I to question the buying power of Ariana Grande fans and the terminally online?
