Adapting a beloved musical for film is a risky endeavor. Sometimes a near-flawless screen translation of a classic show, like Steven Spielberg’s 2021 reinterpretation of Westside storyfails to click with the audience. Other times a contemporary musical In the Heights doesn’t seem to quite fit into the framework of a classic Hollywood-style movie musical. What feels like exuberant exuberance on stage can come across as corny cringe in close-up (or, in the case of 2019’s Catsa kind of eldritch horror). And finding the right casting — stars famous enough to be a big hit at the box office while also possessing the technical singing and dancing skills of a Broadway performer — has stood in the way of many a successful adaptation .

The project to become the Tony-winning hit Bad in a movie – or two, as the on-screen title of this episode reads Bad: Part I– has been going on for over a decade, with a revolving door of would-be filmmakers, stars and writers at one time or another. After consideration by directors Rob Marshall (Chicago), James Mangold (Walk the line, Logan), JJ Abrahams (Clover field, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The hours), the producers eventually went with Jon M. Chu, who created In the Heightstogether with Crazy rich Asians and the second and third films in the Step up series. The screenplay, credited to Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, is adapted from the music and lyrics of Stephen Schwartz and Holzman’s own book for the stage musical, originally based on a bestselling novel by Gregory Maguire.

As for the cast, the cast is a good example of the aforementioned dilemma of whether to fill the leading roles of a musical adaptation with seasoned stage veterans or supernova-sized stars. Bad: Part I splits the difference. As Elphaba, the title character of whom there is a youthful version The Wizard of Oz Evil witch, we have Cynthia Erivo, already a Tony and Grammy winner for the Broadway revival of The color purple but a lesser known figure to film audiences, although she has done critically acclaimed work in films such as Widows And Harriet. And like Galinda, the pre–Wizard of Oz incarnation of Glinda the Good Witch, there’s Ariana Grande-Butera, pop diva and former Nickelodeon TV kid, a singer with a four-octave range who has been releasing hit albums and filling arenas for more than a decade, but who has rarely performed on the big screen (she had a small role as a pop star in Adam McKay’s 2021 satire Don’t look up).

The verdict on which casting philosophy works best, at least for this viewer, falls on the side of the old-school thespian. Erivo plays Elphaba, a lonely outcast turned anti-authoritarian rebel, who has a formidable arsenal of skills: she can sing like an angel And convey a full spectrum of emotions – dejection, outrage, longing, triumph – using only her face and body. Like Galinda, who when we first met her is a brash girl boss along the lines of Mean girls‘ Regina George, Grande is charming and often quite funny. Her agile soprano voice is just right for the character’s virtuoso solos, and her lithe body moves with the grace of a dancer, looking sensational in Paul Tazewell’s dazzling costumes. But when it comes to capturing the humor and nuance of Schwartz’s lyrics, Grande’s enunciation and declamation—her ability to act Through singing – are not always up to the challenge. Next to the powerhouse that Erivo is, Grande’s big solo scenes can sometimes seem one-note. But luckily, together they create such believable chemistry as enemies, romantic rivals, and dueling divas that each performance elevates the other. As for the film that surrounds them, a lavish old-Hollywood spectacle packed with beautifully designed sets and bravura-supporting twists, it’s so vibrant that both the would-be witches and the audience are lifted into the stratosphere.

It’s so vibrant that it lifts both the future witches and the audience into the stratosphere.

The opening flashback goes all the way back to Elphaba’s birth and early childhood, making it clear to fans of the show that they are no longer in Kansas, but rather in the Bad expanded universe. The film unfolds on a much larger canvas than the play, which in its entirety lasted about as long as the first part of the film series alone. Two hours and forty minutes is a long time to sit in a movie theater without breaks. (If we really want to bring back the roadshow-style epic, might we consider reinstating the intermission?) But the film has enough pacing to feel much shorter. A superfluous dialogue scene here and there could have been lost, but it would have felt wrong to leave out the musical numbers that provide much of the show’s dramatic action.

That scene-setting flashback introduces us to the Thropps, a respectable Oz-ian couple who are stunned when their first child is born with bright green skin. Elphaba loses her mother at a young age and grows up as a kind of second-class citizen within the family, with her father (Andy Nyman) openly favoring her younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode). Nessa (like Bode himself) uses a wheelchair, and their father is so overprotective and concerned about her well-being that Elphaba is expected to stay when she is dropped off at Shiz University, the Harvard-meets-Hogwarts of the land of Oz. with her sister as a kind of assistant, without the opportunity to take lessons herself. But soon Elphaba’s latent magical powers, which she barely understands, are noticed by the school’s headmistress, Madame Morrible (a regal Michelle Yeoh).

Elphaba receives private lessons in the magical arts, sparking a wave of jealousy from her roommate Galinda, a hyper-competitive perfectionist so popular that she has an entourage of adoring sycophants (including the always welcome Bowen Yang). The two young women find themselves in a largely unspoken rivalry that intensifies when they both fall in love with a handsome new student, Prince Fiyero (an absolutely ravishing Jonathan Bailey, star of the series). Bridgerton TV series and the London stage). Meanwhile, Nessarose is romanced by shy Munchkin youth Boq (Ethan Slater, Broadway’s SpongeBob and now Grande’s friend).

But college romance isn’t the only intrigue at Shiz U. In a subplot that is considerably more developed here than in the play, Oz undergoes a political crisis that has caused chaos on campus. The old world, in which animals and humans could speak the same language and live as equals, is giving way to a brutal new order in which animals are caged and deprived of their ability to speak. The school’s history teacher, a wise goat with a beautiful voice by Peter Dinklage, falls victim to the institution’s crackdown on animals, which enrages Elphaba and eventually sends her to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard’s help ( an unusually melancholy Jeff Goldblum).

This animal rights storyline sometimes feels like a cumbersome imposition on the central women’s friendship plot, but it’s easy to see why the filmmakers decided to expand it to raise the film’s stakes. As with many hit musicals, the book is by Bad was never his strong point. The dialogue scenes are mainly there to keep things together between songs, and it is in and through the singing that the real storytelling happens. Bad has helped shape a new generation of theater kids for good reason: it is a timeless musical that goes far beyond recycling intellectual property to truly reimagine The Wizard of Oz‘s moral universe, gradually asking big questions about friendship and justice. And it’s hard to think of another musical from the 2000s with as many memorable standalone songs, classics that don’t need context to be in the shower or at the karaoke bar. The film’s staging of these big numbers is almost always just right: intimate or grand depending on the song’s requirements, with witty choreography by Christopher Scott, performed against a backdrop of spectacular and intricately detailed sets by production designer Nathan Crowley. For some scenes, “background” is too weak a word: a dance number set in the school library has round, rotating bookshelves through which the characters swing and dance in as if in book-filled hamster wheels, to ingenious effect .

Bad offers many such moments of visual and auditory pleasure. Despite the film’s arguably excessive running time, the film takes seriously its mandate to not only entertain, but dazzle audiences. Although it can make for a long and somewhat scary sit for small children, it seems like a logical choice for a family vacation. (This year’s Barbenheimer-style battle between Bad And Gladiator 2 is really no contest.) The premise should at least spark some interest for anyone who loves The Wizard of Oz, undoubtedly a Venn diagram bubble overlapping with a large portion of the world’s population. If there was any justice in the world, or at least at the box office, this would be a blockbuster. But as I started by noting, you never know with musicals.

In Bad: Part IAs in the play, Elphaba’s fierce power anthem ‘Defying Gravity’ serves as the heartbreaking final piece, but this time the song marks the end not of the first act, but of the entire film. The curtain won’t rise again until November next year, when Bad: Part Two is scheduled for theatrical release. After a first chapter that is so unexpectedly exciting, I will pace in the lobby of my mind and consider the next twelve months as an extended period. break.