Wicked - Movie Review

Wicked is directed by Jon M. Chu and is the much anticipated adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical. A misunderstood young woman, because of her green skin, and a popular girl, become friends at Shiz University in the land of Oz. After an encounter with the wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads. But before we get into the rest of the video, I do want to give a special thank you to the sponsor, Sony, and the Sony X90L Full Array LED TV. This incredible TV is currently on sale. The 98-inch size will be $4,999, which is $1,000 off. The processor is the TV's most important element, and the XR Cognitive Processor is the top tier by using both artificial and cognitive intelligence to enhance everything you see. The XR Contrast Booster 10 utilizes full array local dimming with up to 60% more local dimming zones than the X90K to provide deeper blacks and brighter highlights in harmony for ultra-realistic contrast at 120Hz. The XR Motion Clarity and XR Clear Image significantly eliminate blur and apply extremely fine texturing to images for the optimal viewing experience. It also has support for leading HDR formats like Dolby Vision, IMAX Enhanced, HDR10, and HLG, which means you won't miss out on enjoying images as they were intended by their creators. So check out the link for the Sony X90L. That link is in the description below. It is on sale right now, like I said, for $4,999. That's $1,000 off. Thank you so much to them for sponsoring this video. Prior to seeing this film, my only exposure to Wicked was occasionally hearing my friends sing the songs at karaoke. I've never seen the Broadway musical, I've never listened to the soundtrack beyond those karaoke events, and I don't really know anything about the story. Of course, I've seen The Wizard of Oz, but I didn't know what this film was about. To top it off, if I were to pinpoint a genre of film that tends to be lower on my list of favorites to watch, it's musicals. I don't hate them. I'll obviously watch them. I've seen tons. It's just that I don't really get that excited about them. So in every way, I am probably the most difficult audience member to win over for Wicked, and yet the movie did, because it is exceptionally well made. And here's just a few of the reasons why. Practical sets. I was positive. In fact, I would have bet money on the fact this movie would be filled with just CGI. It would be a gigantic CGI mess and look incredibly fake, like a bunch of people are standing around a green room dancing and singing, and that is not the case. Of course, there's CGI in the movie. There's flying monkeys and talking goats. But in general, this movie looks remarkably in-camera. There was even a gigantic train built for this movie that weighed multiple tons. The campus that the students attend in the film looks amazing as well. These are clearly sets that were either entirely built or mostly built and then extended with CGI. That's very common, and it really is shockingly common, like you have no idea how many times you have looked at a CGI house in a movie and didn't even realize it. But this looks fantastic. He's taken what he learned directing Step Up 3 as well as In the Heights and amplified it considerably. I'm actually really surprised to say, because I had no anticipation for this film whatsoever, that Wicked is a movie with a capital M. The dancing and the choreography, the amount of people on screen at any given time, the things that are constantly happening in regards to blocking and the movements of the camera is truly masterful. John M. Chu has done a really phenomenal job helming this movie. His shots are composed beautifully. There's tons of camera movement tilting up from people's hands to their feet to their faces back and down again, and all around them as they dance, it feels like it is constantly in motion. It's a 2 hour 40 minute movie. It's pretty long, but it felt more like 2.20, so there's a good 20 minutes in there that weren't accounted for. So the practical sets, not something I was expecting. Limited use of very noticeable CGI, not something I was expecting. Ariana Grande, really damn good in this movie. A great comic performance. She got a ton of laughs from my audience, which was packed. Obviously there were a lot of fans there. There were tons of people dressed up in costumes. I knew she could sing, but I hadn't really seen any of the Nickelodeon stuff she did. I kind of missed that. And she was very, very funny in the movie. She's playing a character that is inherently fairly unlikable. You look at her and you think, oh, like you don't really care about anybody but yourself. And yet her character evolves throughout the movie to get her to a place where you do start to understand where she's coming from. But Ariana Grande keeps you liking her throughout all of the mean stuff she does, which is really difficult to do. But the absolute lightning bolt of a performance in this movie is Cynthia Erivo. Her singing voice gave me chills down my body at multiple times. She blows the speakers out. I saw this in Dolby Atmos, which was the best way to see the film. She is a phenomenal singer, obviously, but she is incredibly endearing in the movie, too, to make you care about someone who has dealt with being viewed as an outsider for her entire life. She's incredible in the dramatic scenes. I really found myself caring a lot about her. But her interplay with Ariana Grande is also fantastic. These two characters become reluctant roommates at this campus, have a lot of ups and downs together. One of my favorites being the popular song in which Ariana Grande is trying to explain to her how she can become more popular, do her hair differently, wear different clothes. It was a really fun sequence. And that's what's also great about Wicked is that it is able to kind of probe at the depths of depression and anxiety and things that bother us a lot as people, especially when you're unpopular or you're feeling lonely or you feel like you're an outcast. But it is also able to have an obscene amount of effervescent bubblegum fun that I think the film will win over even some of the more cynical people like I was going in, admittedly. Now, this is actually a part one. Part two is coming out next year. That's not really being marketed all that much. It doesn't affect the movie. This felt like it had an ending to me. It felt final. Like if I didn't watch part two, I do feel like I would have experienced a narrative that had some finality to it, which is great. Although I want to watch part two. Now, recently, part one and part two has kind of been a bad idea when it comes to movies. Even really great movies like Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning have decided to drop the part one from streaming release. And the new film, which was originally Dead Reckoning, part two is now called The Final Reckoning, even though it is 100 percent of part two. And so we've just gotten into this space where most people don't want to do this. But when it comes to this movie, clearly, there was a lot of story and a lot of songs and they have taken the respect of the source material and split it into two. I don't feel like this movie is suffering as a result. This doesn't feel like a Hunger Games Mockingjay part one or two or whatever. When you when you feel like, oh, like I didn't get the ending, like I don't feel like I experienced a story that had a beginning, middle and end. This movie feels that way. They did a really good job to make sure that even if you missed the part one in the title, that at least especially if you're a fan of the original Wizard of Oz movie, you feel like you're going towards something you understand and you don't really have to watch two. Of course, they're going to want you to. But that's good for this movie. And it's good for audience members who hate the idea of splitting a film into two parts and not feeling like they have finality. Guys, this movie genuinely surprised me. Now, if you're somebody who has decided for whatever reason, hate this, but you don't like the casting or you just don't like things that are popular, just don't go. But for people who really want to see this, I think they're going to have a great time. And for somebody who is willing to give themselves over to something that maybe they weren't expecting to be wowed by, you might have a good time, too. Guys, thank you so much, as always, for watching. 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