I avoided this movie because I suspected it would be an ugly, poorly shot pile of content with little artistic merit beyond the central performances. I figured it would be very much not my thing, and I’d just have to be happy that the intended audience seems to love it and are packing theaters as a result.
But then so many people came out of the woodwork to say “trust me, I know the exact movie you’re fearing, and I was fearing it too, but I assure you that this blockbuster piece of colorful IP is the exception to the rule. It’s GREAT.”
So I checked it out. And not only was it exactly the piece of hideously ugly, soulless slop that I expected, it was so much worse. Sooooo much worse. Mostly on account of the fact that the filmmakers make every wrong choice. I’d say they don’t know how to make a movie at all, but it’s so perfectly stacked with the exact wrong choices in every moment that there’s no way this was an accident. To make a movie with this thorough of a misunderstanding of how movies work can only come from someone who knows how to make a movie and then decides to do the exact opposite of what would work. Use any amount of contrast at any point challenge failed.
But this is gonna win like 10 Oscars, and our sprint toward a world where artistic merit is de-prioritized in exchange for…whatever the fuck this poor excuse for a motion picture is continues. I know that it’s kinda pointless to hate on this movie, but come on. The definition of putting lipstick on a pig and knowing that the intended audience will eat this up solely because they recognize it.
The good: Erivo is fantastic. She gets more story/characterization across via her performance than anything on the page, and my god she can sing. Grande, too, is fantastic. Her voice is amazing and she has a genuine gift for comedy — and it’s a bizarre comedy style too.
The bad: every other aspect of this movie.
Why is there a wraparound device that doesn’t wrap around? Why, if all of this is being told by Glinda, does her retelling feature scenes that she’s not in and couldn’t know about? Why, when the talking goat claims that goats have no upper front teeth (it’s true, they don’t), does he have upper front teeth? It’s as if no one put any thought into it! What’s the deal with the animal backstory? You’ve got three hours of mostly filler here and you couldn’t even devote enough time to a b-plot that could double as fantastic world building?!? Of course you couldn’t, you were too busy making sure that everyone was backlit in gray lighting so that it looks like everything was shot through a pair of gas station sunglasses. And what the fuck is the point of creating so much choreography and then making sure that there’s no way to actually see any of it?!? Let the stage aspects breathe a bit!!
And director Jon M. Chu claims that he and his team focused on building actual sets and merely enhancing them with CGI so that things “feel real.” I don’t buy that for a second. NOTHING feels like a real set. It’s so wild to me that in a large scale effort to make digital images look real, we’ve chosen not to improve the quality of these images, but to instead find the thick, blurry line between real and fake and just focus on that. Since they couldn’t make everything look tangible, they decided to make nothing look tangible.
Now listen, I know that I’m not the intended audience (although maybe I am? I adore musicals!), but I’m also not the intended audience for The Wizard of Oz, and when I watch that movie I never fail to recognize what a staggering cinematic achievement it is. With just color alone the filmmakers made something that is still visually and cinematically impressive to this day. There’s no reason why a filmmaking team with endless resources and nearly a century’s worth of technological advancements since The Wizard of Oz should fail so epically in evoking any sort of wonder, beauty, or awe from the Land of Oz.
But I guess as far as a movie musical based on a broadway musical based on a satire novel based on an original film musical based on a fantasy book series goes, it’s fine.
Directed by Jon M. Chu
Written by Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, based on the other novel by L. Frank Baum
Starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, a bunch of ones and zeros in a server somewhere
Rated PG, 160 interminable minutes
