Review Roundup: Is WICKED Part One Popular with Critics?

The Wicked movie is finally here! Reviews have begun to come in for Part One of the highly anticipated adaptation of the Broadway hit. As of November 19, the movie is Certified Fresh at 92% on the Tomatometer with 101 reviews and Verified Hot at 99% on the Popcornmeter with over 2,500 reviews. Find out what critics think of the blockbuster event below!

Wicked, the untold story of the witches of Oz, stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba who is misunderstood because of her unusual green skin and has yet to discover her true power. Ariana Grande plays Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart. 

The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. After encountering The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads, and their lives take very different paths. 

The Wicked film adaptation also Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Ethan Slater as Boq, and Marissa Bode as Nessarose. The first part will be released on November 22, 2024, with Part Two hitting theaters on November 21, 2025.

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Manohla Dargis, The New York Times: The director Jon M. Chu opens “Wicked” big and only goes bigger, at times to a fault. His credits include “Crazy Rich Asians” and the musical “In the Heights,” but “Wicked” is a horse of another color and it’s filled with huge sets, some dozen musical numbers and many moving parts that generations of fans know intimately. From the start, Chu gives “Wicked” an accelerated pace, amping it with restless, swooping camerawork and overloading it with a surfeit of everything, with ceaselessly moving bodies and eye-popping props.

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: "Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande have chemistry in abundance as the central witches in glorious-looking but overlong Oz epic. And there’s more to come."

Peter Debruge, Variety: "Home is where Dorothy was trying to get all along, of course, though Chu clearly designed Wicked to be experienced the old-fashioned way: on the biggest screen you can find, among a crowd of giddy theatergoers (inevitably singing along in some screenings). Unlike several recent tuners, which tried to hide their musical dimension from audiences, “Wicked” embraces its identity the way Elphaba does her emerald skin. Turns out such confidence makes all the difference in how they’re perceived."

Nicholas Barber, BBC: "Wicked is drawn-out and bland in comparison. It might have been lighter on its feet if the editors had cut a subplot about magical talking animals, which doesn't add anything except several minutes of running time. And they could have cut Elphaba's sister, who is given perplexingly little to do."

Christian Holub, Entertainment Weekly: "For now, like Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune, this Wicked manages to end on a note of “to be continued” while still feeling like a complete story. If only its imagery had a little more magic!"

Brian Truitt, USA Today: "The movie musical is both superfluous and splendiferous, yet it casts a big-hearted spell that you’d have to be wicked not to appreciate at least a little."

Clarisse Loughrey, Independent: "But it’s hard to escape the looming second half of this story on the horizon, which involves a terrible amount of explaining how everything and everyone in The Wizard of Oz came to be. Wicked will need to dream bigger and brighter, otherwise it may just fade completely under the spell of a classic."

Pete Hammond, Deadline: "Chu has made a movie musical (the best since Chicago), even if it ends with its own “intermission”, that manages to stand on its own as a fully satisfying screen entertainment, and also serves as a delicious invitation to an upcoming second half I quite frankly can’t wait to see."

Witney Seibold, Slashfilm: "Worst of all, the film is loooong. It's not just low-energy. It drags. One could listen to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" three and a half times in the same 161 minutes. And perhaps one should. It would be a more edifying musical experience."

Bilge Ebiri, Vulture: "Despite its status as a revisionist reinvention of a classic text, so much of it feels preordained, even programmed. We wait not for revelations or surprises, but for affirmation and escalation. Wicked is as enchanting as it is exhausting."

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: "Wicked succeeds because of some unreproducible, lightning in a bottle convergences—of director, stars, craftspeople, and high-status material. But Wicked also makes a broader case for patience and careful thought, for grand ambition honed over the course of many years. In order to defy gravity, gravity must first be understood."

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: "The respective casting of those roles — Ariana Grande as the minimally gifted sorcery student who will go on to become Glinda, Good Witch of the North, and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West — is the movie’s winning hand. Their vocals are clear and strong and supple to a degree many of us have learned not to expect after too many movie musicals that cast merely adequate singers and then Auto-Tune them to death."

William Bibbiani, TheWrap: “Wicked is a great show, but it’s only half a movie. It’s hard to gauge the success of a film when there’s a very good chance the next installment could retroactively ruin it. (I’m looking at you, “It: Chapter Two.”) But despite the film’s flaws — inconsistent visual effects and a supporting cast that can’t keep up with Erivo and Grande vocally (then again, few people can) — it’s a bright and colorful whirlwind. The story hits hard, the characters come alive, the music and dancing are a delight."

Kate Erbland, IndieWire: "Blowing out the story into two parts does allow for more time spent with some characters, like Jonathan Bailey’s delectably himbo-coded Fiyero, while others have to do without ever having their own names so much as uttered (Bowen Yang, you are, as ever, so funny, but I had no idea you played “Pfannee”). And as good as Erivo and Grande are together — especially when they are singing and dancing through the musical’s iconic songbook and adding their own magic to these characters — it feels like, just as their essential bond is blossoming, we’re rolling credits."

Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com: "And yet, overstuffed as the film is at 2 hours and 40 minutes, this is only part one: Wicked ends where the intermission occurs in the stage show, with part two coming in November 2025. It's a lot to ask of an audience. Still, people who love this story and these characters will be delighted, and there's much here for people who aren't familiar with the musical but are looking for a cinematic escape around the holidays."

Kristy Puchko, Mashable: "Still, even the lowest lows can't make the film's highest highs less dazzling. Indulgent and unwieldy as it is, Wicked is a thrill, at times wildly funny, heart-soaring, and ultimately inspirational in spite of itself."

Aisha Harris, NPR: "The result is a movie that, while pleasant and occasionally moving, concludes with its apex ("Defying Gravity") which also happens to be a cliffhanger. It's an unusually and exceedingly peculiar state – both complete and incomplete at the same time. The feeling isn't quite loathing, exactly. But it is a bit tiresome, especially since it likely means we have to expect yet another full year of a Wicked press tour. Like its predecessor, it's an imperfect production that has a lot of heart and brains. If it only had the courage to tell a complete story in a reasonable amount of time."

Alyssa Mora, IGN: "Wicked is a well-oiled machine in the hands of Jon M. Chu. This film adaptation epitomizes what modern movie musicals can and should be, embracing its source material while cleverly translating it to screen. Tear-jerking performances by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo make the movie, playing to their individual strengths to bring to life the rapport between Glinda and Elphaba, who’ll go on to become the good and wicked witches of Wizard of Oz fame."

Helen O'Hara, Empire: "Thanks to a nice blend of comic moments and certified bangers, the (again, very long) running time passes pretty fast, though there are moments when the dancing and singing feels relentless and where you might long for a soothing glimpse of the dull plains of Kansas. Still, despite coming to a pause rather than an ending (Part Two is still to come), it quite literally ends on a high note — an intensely powerful one at that. And there’s no defying ‘Defying Gravity’."

Jeff Ewing, Collider: "The film works on an emotional level, and yet there are also well-delivered lessons about growing fascism that are tragically poignant in our American era. The set pieces are big and bold, and the dance numbers are creative and colorful. Grande is continually hilarious as the charmingly vapid Galinda, while Erivo is breathtakingly powerful as the so-called Wicked Witch. Both Grande and Erivo sound glorious through beautiful interpretations of modern musical classics like "Defying Gravity." It all coheres into one of the best silver screen adaptations of a musical in ages, and easily one of the year's best pictures.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: "It’s arguable if Wicked could ever be a meaningfully persuasive prequel for the characters in The Wizard of Oz as we actually see them in the 1939 film, as this would involve cancelling their powerfully timeless, mythological aura, and instead substituting the more banal idea of human development. But this is the joke, and this is the story, and what an enjoyable spectacle it is."

Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times: "With another installment on the way, “Wicked” is already too big to fail. But the weight of expectations is a heavy thing to bear and they bog down this capable movie version on its way to liftoff. The film may struggle to take flight, but when it does, it is undeniably moving, with a message of freedom and defiance that resonates now more than ever."

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