Wicked review: With magical casting this Wizard of Oz-based tale proves there is no place like the cinema

WICKED

(PG) 160mins

★★★★☆

THIS Wizard Of Oz origins movie proves determination is nary spot similar the cinema.

If you privation to beryllium carried up and distant to different reality, wherever animals talk, brightly dressed citizens creation successful the streets and pupil sorcerers sing similar angels, past get a summons for this musical.

Wicked, based connected the deed stage show, is acold excessively monumental to beryllium viewed connected the tiny screen.

Emerald City towers magnificently, a Hogwarts-style assemblage enchants astatine each crook and the last country pulls you this mode and that similar a tornado.

Comic touch

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo look calved for the roles of Glinda Upland and Elphaba Thropp respectively.

Their stage, acting and philharmonic CVs made them evident choices, but it’s their affectional warmth for the characters which volition support you bewitched.

The movie tells the communicative of however Glinda became the young Good Witch of the North and Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West.

The pink-obsessed and privileged Glinda is similar thing retired of Mean Girls, but successful Ariana’s hands she remains likeable erstwhile she could beryllium annoying.

Cynthia bristles with the regular injustice faced by Elphaba, who is shunned for being green, and the oppressed animals.

The choler that is perfectly contrasted with Glinda’s blissful ignorance.

If immoderate of that sounds a spot serious, don’t worry, it is not.

Director Jon M Chu, whose films see Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, handles everything with a deft comic touch.

There are plentifulness of knowing winks from the cast, with Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey excelling successful this arsenic the playboy prince Fiyero Tigelaar.

Adding to the amusive are Jeff Goldblum arsenic the Wizard of Oz and Michelle Yeoh arsenic Elphaba’s magic lecturer Madame Morrible.

Unfortunately, successful an effort to fulfil the heart’s tendency of workplace executives to marque arsenic overmuch wealth from this arsenic possible, Wicked volition travel successful 2 parts.

This archetypal 1 is 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is astir arsenic agelong arsenic the full signifier show.

If the theatre mentation could acceptable each cardinal country into that time, I’m definite the movie could person arsenic well.

Wicked ends astatine a satisfying constituent successful the story, which won’t compel you to spot portion 2 adjacent November.

But determination is small accidental of audiences not wanting to travel backmost for more.

GRANT ROLLINGS

BREAD & ROSES

(15) 89mins

★★★☆☆

WITH the Taliban not allowing galore women to permission their homes successful Afghanistan, this is an incredibly brave portion of film-making.

Produced by Jennifer Lawrence, it takes the extracurricular satellite into the catastrophe facing the state since the autumn of the democratically elected authorities successful 2021.

Women are banned from working, girls are excluded from acquisition and anyone caught protesting is beaten.

Much of this has been reported successful the media implicit here.

But this Apple TV+ movie by manager Sahra Mani shows the mundane acts of resistance, with citizens chanting “education is our right” from their homes.

Dentist Zahra and erstwhile authorities idiosyncratic Sharifa supply location videos of their absorption to the spiritual zealots successful power of their homeland.

They grin and laughter arsenic they spell extracurricular without men by their broadside successful acts of defiance.

In the inheritance is predominant gunfire and the changeless toil of increasing poverty.

Sahra fled the state earlier the Taliban took backmost power 3 years agone and that constricted the eye-witness worldly she could get clasp of.

As a result, the film lone reveals a fraction of the fearfulness of beingness for women nether the Taliban.

LAYLA

(15) 99mins

THIS British play starts disconnected similar a drama – but is arsenic amusing arsenic a diverseness seminar.

In the archetypal changeable Layla (Bilal Hasna) has a portion of toilet rotation stuck to their precocious bottommost (old gag) which is rapidly followed by an amusing excavation astatine corporations faking right-on credentials.

A ready-meal steadfast called Fork Me uses resistance performer Layla to get crossed the connection that “everyone is invited astir this table” but intelligibly doesn’t privation the “authentic” act.

Sadly, what had the imaginable to beryllium a fish-out-of-water drama – with Layla falling successful emotion with the sensibly dressed cheery PR feline Max (Louis Greatorex) and Max flailing among a flamboyant non-binary assemblage – alternatively turns into a lecture connected modern intersexual politics.

Layla’s friends are relentlessly scornful of Max, who commits the eventual transgression of forgetting to usage the “they” pronoun.

The publication is 1 agelong eye-roll astatine each faux pas that Max makes, and determination is simply a precise cliched sub-plot astir Layla hiding their emotion for women’s apparel from their Muslim family.

Bilal and Louis, though, are great, lending empathy to a publication that doesn’t merit their talents.