Every week, Kristopher Pollard from Milwaukee Film and Radio Milwaukee’s Dori Zori talk about movies — because that’s what you do when you’re Cinebuds.
Adapting a beloved Brodway musical is a road fraught with danger. Just ask Dear Evan Hansen. From box-office receipts alone (more than a half-billion dollars worldwide as of this writing), we know Wicked managed to avoid any sleep-inducing poppies and flying monkeys waiting for it on the path to success. But movie executives and movie audiences have very different definitions of “good,” and we only care about the second one.
The challenge in front of the film version of Wicked is the stacked success of its intellectual-property predecessors. People loved the book by Gregory Maguire and really loved the subsequent musical, although not always the same people considering the differences between the two. Even if you’ve never encountered either of those, you sure as heck know The Wizard of Oz (more likely the movie than the book) and have thoughts about the prequelizing of a beloved story like that.
Dori and Kpolly went into Wicked with fond memories of the classic Judy Garland film, and yet carried a healthy amount of excitement into the theater rather than skepticism. For the most part, that faith was rewarded by a film that managed to balance its two assignments: entertain the audience and set the table for part two.
As our hosts discuss, the story raises curiosities rather than frustratingly hitting you over the head with plot points that won’t get resolved until the follow-up. Wicked isn’t quite a standalone experience, but it’s also not a maddening series of cliffhangers. There’s a general pull into this world of talking animals and ulterior motives that left Dori and Kpolly pleasantly looking forward to the second installment.
You’ll hear all the details about their theater-going adventures (one involved an intrusive singalong, one did not), their feelings about Wicked and their latest installment of “Top Three” in the full episode at the top of the page or wherever you listen to podcasts.
