Helga without the H

Almost every year I attempt (with varying degrees of success) to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible before the ceremony. I post half-assed reviews here on my blog, and then at the end I write up some sort of silly analysis, predictions, reactions, etc. The quantity and quality depends entirely on how much time and energy I have each year, and I’m not gonna lie, this year’s already starting pretty dang rough! But let’s see how it goes. Today we turn to:

Wicked

[10 nominations for best film, actress (Cynthia Ervino), supporting actress (Ariana Grande), editing, production design, costume design, hair/makeup, visual effects, sound, and score]

My very first thought upon completing this movie was “OMG. These filmmakers must be sooooooooo pissed about losing to Emilia Perez.” So. Pissed. It’s very clear that a lot of people worked really, really, really hard to make this movie absolutely shine. Give this thing all the awards for production design and costumes. Make a couple new awards for “best singing” and “best casting” (hey wait- why don’t they have best casting??? and give those out, too. From start to finish, everything in this movie looked and sounded 100% perfect.

That being said, the story here is very stupid. Also, we don’t need two separate 2.5+ hour movies. This whole thing could have easily been chopped to 1 hour. The truth is, very little actually happens in this movie, especially in the first half. I took a break halfway through to walk my dog, then was shocked that one hour in we’d done nothing except for to meet our characters. Yet with all that extra time, not much really happens with our characters themselves to build the deep bonds they’re supposedly building. And our super sorcery student doesn’t seem to learn anything in her supposed sorcery class. And the whole thing with the animals, which is supposedly [spoiler alert] the main thing on which our entire story hinges, was covered in like 10 seconds. I was about to say that I don’t understand how something so long can say so little, and then I remembered that, oh yeah, it’s cuz this is a musical. Musicals require us to stop and sing/dance for like 10 minutes at a time instead of advancing the plot. We could have certainly chopped some of the musical bits. Is this sacrilege to say about a musical? I dunno, probably. But time is money, sometimes more is less, etc. They did a significantly better job adapting than some other stage-to-film musicals I’ve seen (The Color Purple & Les Mis both come to mind, and presumably Cats though I never actually saw it), but not good enough.

I went into this movie pretty blind, and frankly kinda wanting to hate it. I’ve never seen the stage show, nor have I read the book. I’m of course familiar with The Wizard of Oz. I knew this movie supposedly told the origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West. I’m generally a fan of these villain origin stories (Maleficent, Cruella, etc were fantastic, but Kraven broke my heart), and so far it’s working pretty great here. We’ll see if I feel the same way in the 2nd half. But I’m frustrated that this take on the classic seems to be ignoring all of the 19th century political symbolism from the original story. Isn’t our witch supposed to represent the lawless Wild West? Why is she saving kittens and trying to fit in with cool kids at her school? What does that have to do with the gold standard? Speaking of fitting in at school, why are all of these college kids clearly in their 30s? When I realized this entire movie is about college kids (which I totally did not see coming), I immediately jumped to the Googler to check the actor ages, because Ervino feels my age. Indeed, all these people are too old. But the good news is that they all did a fantastic job pulling off the youthful vibe. I swear Ervino changed her singing voice to be more youthful. Grande will just look 14 for her entire life. Jonathan Bailey was PERFECT as the sexy prince. I was really looking forward to seeing him because I loved him in Brigerton, and he did not disappoint here at all. Honestly, I think he could have deserved a nomination.

Speaking of amazing performances, what do I make of Ervino and Grande’s nominations? This one’s tough… vocally they were both absolutely incredible. I mean holy cow that singing was on fucking point. The harmonies! The pitch! Amazing! But… does singing count as acting? We have Anne Hathaway (who I love, BTW) an award for cry-singing her way through a single solitary song in Les Mis, and these ladies did waaaay more than that. But how about the non-singing aspects of their performances? It’s tough to say for Grande, because her character is somewhat one-note, and it felt like she was playing herself. On the other hand, that’s what the role called for. Ervino had to do a lot more emoting, as we watched her character growing and changing. At this point, I think it would be a fair win for her.

This is tough to admit because, as I mentioned before, I went in wanting to hate this movie. I’d already heard that it was a two-parter, and that made me grumpy. My loyal readers (all 2 of you) know that I think these movies are already too long; making TWO ENTIRE MOVIES is a bridge too far. Grr. But also I’d seen the controversy over the fan art poster that Ervino shit on for no good reason. What an entitled cunt, right? As for Grande, I just read Jennette McCurdy’s memoir where she doesn’t paint her Sam & Cat costar in the greatest light, so I’m not inclined to be all lovey-dovey for her. That being said, with all the news about how shitty it was to be a Nickelodeon kid actor, I’m happy to see one of them succeeding. So good for her; she’s legitimately talented and did great in this movie.

Bottom line: This movie was spectacularly executed. Ervino is my current leading contender for best actress. But the stupidity of the plot and the poorly-timed storytelling keeps this from being a best picture contender for me.