Film Review - Wicked for Good (2025)

Wicked for Good is the follow on to 2024’s Wicked based off of the Broadway musical and again sees Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo return as Glinda and Elphaba respectively, the story here sees Elphaba determined to prove to the people of Oz that the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is a fraud but Ozians have become afraid of the Wicked Witch and Glinda must decide whether to fight her friend or try and save her.

I was so keen for this movie for much of this year (only Avatar Fire and Ash I had anticipated more) because I was so thoroughly charmed by the first movie, it had good songs, it had a good visual feel and it had those wonderful wonderful performances by Grande and Erivo at its core and I had really hoped that Wicked For Good would be a Dune Part Two situation where part one was great but part two was something special.

Sadly however that did not happen this time as this movie is nowhere near as fun or as charming as the first film and first reason why is the musical numbers, more often than not they brought the film to a halt too many times for my liking, a good musical will let the songs help to drive the story and bring that part of it to a good climax but here it feels like the movie stops so the songs can start and one song in particular wants so much to be like the Mob Song from Beauty and the Beast but it has not one tenth of the Mob Songs punch or impact.

Secondly the storytelling here is a mess and a big reason for this is the attempts to tie this part of the story into the events of the Wizard of Oz movie and those tie ins and call backs and references felt so obvious and predictable that I was reminded of how Madame Web tied into the broader Spider-man universe with equally as obvious and predictable results.

Thirdly the look of Oz here feels so dull and lifeless, now that criticism was there for the first film but I didn’t really buy into it whereas here I did and again I think that is because of those tie ins to the Wizard of Oz which was so groundbreaking for its use of colour in film in 1939 and in contrast Oz has that standard digigrey murkiness that we see too often nowadays.

And lastly the cast feels wasted here, Grande and Erivo are as good as ever but they only really work in this movie when they share scenes together, Jeff Goldblum was an inspired choice to play the Wizard but here his singing is terrible while Michelle Yeoh was okay as Madame Morrible but her singing isn’t great either while Jonathan Bailey is wasted here as the Prince.

And so that was Wicked for Good and talk about a big downgrade from the first movie to the second, I recommended the first film without question last year but this time I cannot and I take no pleasure in saying that one little bit, 1 out of 5.