Wicked: Part 1 Parent Guide

Loathing. Unadulterated loathing. That’s the emotion that Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Ariana Grande) experience when they meet each other on their first day at Shiz University.

Blonde, perky, and polished, Galinda (later known as Glinda) expects to be the school’s queen bee and gain a spot in the rarely offered sorcery class. She was also promised a private room, which she has stuffed full of pink clothes, bedding, and boxes.

Green-skinned and constantly rejected, Elphaba does not expect to attend university, until an unexpected display of her magical powers draws the attention of the faculty. When the sorcery instructor, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) offers her private instruction, she earns a place at school, a bed in Galinda’s suite – and Galinda’s resentment. Will they be able to move past their difficult beginning? And will Elphaba ever meet the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) and obtain her heart’s desire?

Adapted from the blockbuster Broadway musical, Wicked is many things: a remixed backstory to The Wizard of Oz, a buddy pic, a maturation tale, and a showdown between good and evil. It’s also a feast for the eyes, a source of Grammy-award-winning music, and one heck of a good time.

I should be very clear: if you don’t love musicals, Wicked isn’t going to change your mind. But if you, like me, enjoy a good musical (emphasis on “good”), you will have a blast watching this film. The visual design is wonderful: imaginative, stylistically coherent, vividly colored (without looking plastic or fake), and completely immersive. I also need to give credit to the movie’s outstanding cast. Keeping viewers focused on the story when you unrealistically launch into a song and dance routine takes a significant amount of on-screen chemistry. This cast has it. I might quibble that they’re all at least a decade (or two) too old to be university students, but the performances shine. Cynthia Erivo brings inner strength, empathy, and power vocals to Elphaba and makes us care about her. Even Galinda - patronizing, vacuous, and smugly certain of her goodness and superiority - is given some depth and flashes of self-awareness in Ariana Grande’s brilliantly nuanced performance.

Best of all, Wicked delivers a compelling story; strong themes of loyalty, integrity and compassion; and plenty of excitement within the limits of a PG rating. Negative content is minor, consisting mainly of low intensity violence, bullying (based on skin color and species), and brief alcohol consumption. I wouldn’t recommend it for little ones, but older kids who are prepared to sit through two-and-a-half hours and some moments of peril should be fine. To be honest, my biggest complaint about this film is that it’s only the first part of the tale: we have to wait until November 2025 to see the rest of the story. This story has me under its spell and there’s no reversing it until I see Part Two. It’s going to be a long year.