I’d be lying if I said I was there Bad‘many enthusiasts. I saw Idina and Kristin at the Gershwin Theater in 2003, but I was firmly on the team that season Lane Q. So were the Tony voters: the latter famously scored a triple crown, winning Best Book, Score and Musical. Naturally, Bad got the last laugh in the end; Still going after 21 years, it is an international juggernaut and one of the few contemporary musicals to penetrate the public consciousness.

There’s no doubt that Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation Bad will have a similarly long-lasting legacy. Divided into two parts, the first of which hits theaters on November 22. Bad, part oneis a great Hollywood blockbuster, both a crowd-pleasing popcorn flick and a smart adaptation that trusts the material enough to stay largely out of the way. Are there any flaws? Certainly. But overall I really enjoyed it – much more than I ever expected.

Loosely inspired by Gregory Maguire’s novel and based entirely on Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s stage production, it opens with a close-up of a witch’s black hat reflected in a tornado and zooms out to show us the four heroes of the to show a movie. The Wizard of Oz skip the Yellow Brick Road. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead and Oz is happy. When Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande) arrives via bubble, she regales the citizens with the story of how she and the green girl – Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) – were (gasp!) friends.

Bad, part onefollows the ridiculously perfect G(a)linda and the magically uncontrolled Elphaba during their time at Shiz University, where they accidentally become roommates. Glinda falls in love with the handsome Winkie Prins Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has just registered for Shiz, along with his extremely tight pants. Elphaba is taken under the wing of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and receives an invitation to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).

When Elphaba realizes that the Wizard is up to no good – namely that he is responsible for suffocating talking animals like her professor Dr. Dillamond (a CGI goat with cute glasses, voiced by Peter Dinklage) – Elphaba takes matters into his own hands and is declared public enemy number one.

In short, Bad, part oneis the entire first act of the Broadway show, presented in full, from “No One Mourns the Wicked” to “Defying Gravity,” albeit with more talking.

Chu has retained Bad’The book’s best asset is book writer Holzman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dana Fox (and makes an adorable cameo alongside Stephen Schwartz and the original stars). Condensing Maguire’s sprawling tome into a stage musical suitable for a family audience was no small feat of structure and economy, and Holzman has found clever ways to expand her first act into what feels like a complete, self-contained story. She gives us flashes of Elphaba and her disabled sister Nessarose as children – Karis Musongole and Cesily Collette Taylor are thoroughly adorable – and shows us the lifelong tension between Elphaba and her father, Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman, stern).

Schwartz’s score is the mixed bag on stage, and the film collapses in the same places as the show. “Something Bad” is less interesting when it’s sung by a CGI goat instead of a man in a mask who can make us feel real emotions. The Ozdust Ballroom sequence of “Dancing Through Life” takes precedenceever to get through it, and Bailey’s part of the song in Shiz U’s rotating library would be a lot more interesting to look at if it weren’t so washed out (the backlighting throughout the film is a real problem).

But the hits are the hits. Erivo is a little too gruff throughout, but she immediately puts us on her side with “The Wizard and I,” delivering pathos and longing that grabs us through the screen with “I’m Not That Girl” (a song that also stops the film being dead in its tracks). Grande, channeling her stage predecessor Chenoweth, is right there on “Popular,” pulling every joke out of her complete lack of self-awareness. Their “What Is This Feeling?”, performed in split screen, is hilarious, but too much dialogue is inserted into the climactic “Defying Gravity,” killing the song’s pace. It still lands with awe, but it doesn’t have the same impact as on stage.

The awe factor Real moves to “One Short Day,” in which Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks (whose work isn’t always as grim as it seems in certain scenes) and editor Myron Kerstein get to show off the vibrancy of Paul Tazewell’s costumes, which nod to Susan Hilferty’s theatrical designs, and especially Nathan Crowley’s stunning production design. Crowley immerses us in the Emerald City in a way that almost feels like going to a theme park, a prime example of the ever-vanishing art of tactile world-building for cinema. The tension that comes with seeing actors dwarfed by gargantuan set pieces – not to mention all the money involved – is undeniable.

To this end, Bad, part onesoars where it counts, even if Chu and Kerstein could afford to shorten some of the pregnant pauses that led to a two-and-a-half-hour running time. A visually spectacular tribute to the stage production, it has a lot of heart and is just plain fun. I never thought I’d say this, but bring on part two.