‘Depraved: For Good’ evaluate: Ariana Grande is a enjoyment of smarter sequel

Eventually, “Depraved: For Good” reveals the mechanics behind Glinda’s bubble. It’s not magic. It’s technological wizardry engineered by the person backstage himself to persuade the Munchkins that Glinda, charismatic however haplessly unskilled, has supernatural skills. To make use of the parlance of his press secretary, the gimmick is merely a “vehicular spherical globe.”

“The wand actually sells it,” says conniving Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Likewise, after 2024’s narratively dreary “Depraved,” returning director Jon M. Chu persuades us to come back again to Ouncesfor this smarter, sprightlier follow-up that’s all concerning the pageantry of propaganda.

On this Oz, picture is every little thing and the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is the spin-master. “As soon as people purchase into your blarney, it’s the factor they’ll most maintain on to,” he croons in a playfully retro ditty whose balloon dance and squawking horns allude to Charlie Chaplin in “The Nice Dictator” and “Cabaret’s” Joel Gray (who coincidentally performed the Wizard function on Broadway).

The script by Dana Fox and unique Broadway playwright Winnie Holzman follows the construction of the 2003 stage musical, itself an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Depraved: The Life and Instances of the Depraved Witch of the West.” Think about the break between movies a yearlong intermission between acts. The primary installment was all tedious setup. The second has a physique depend.

To briefly recap the primary “Depraved,” Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the long run Depraved Witch, had been as soon as faculty roommates. Glinda is charming and well-liked; Elphaba, a green-skinned outcast with paranormal powers, is embraced solely by her moony sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), the impulsive Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) and, step by step, the perky, pink-clad Glinda. Now vaguely older, the ladies have grow to be figureheads for opposing sides, with Glinda an Emerald Metropolis influencer and Elphaba an animal rights activist: the lime-colored embodiment of Greenpeace.

Erivo is a significant expertise with lungs like twin airplane engines and a display presence of pure metal. The final movie suffered resulting from her energy; she was merely an excessive amount of girl to play an insecure younger scholar. Broadway productions can solid Elphabas over 30. (Idina Menzel was 32 when she originated the function.) However onscreen — particularly within the close-ups Chu enjoys — there’s no spell on Earth, over or underneath the rainbow, that might persuade me Erivo is a pigtailed wallflower. That’s as fantastical of a requirement as Sidney Lumet’s 1978 “The Wiz” insisting that the nice diva Diana Ross’ Dorothy was a nervous nelly who’d by no means been south of Harlem’s a hundred and twenty fifth Road.

Fortunately, Erivo’s maturity now works since her character is wiser and extra cynical — though it’s nonetheless goofy to see her skateboarding on a broomstick. In her introduction, she swoops over the poppy fields to free the enslaved oxen pressured to construct the Yellow Brick Highway. (The cattle are handled so horrendously that a minimum of one child in each theater will pledge to go vegetarian.)

Later, Erivo’s Elphaba even enjoys an evening of grownup shenanigans with Bailey’s Prince Fiyero. Their love scene begins awkwardly. The actors don’t have a lot chemistry they usually’re each carrying two tons of costumes. But, by sheer power of will, Chu strong-arms the scene into a classy tryst that simply occurs to happen in a tree. As they sing the ballad “As Lengthy as You’re Mine,” reworked to sound a bit sleazier, like one thing Sharon Stone would have skulked round to in a ’90s thriller, Elphaba slips out of her frilled black robe and Fiyero strips off his army belt and suspenders. By the morning after, the pair lastly handle to work up one smooch with a bit of warmth.

The true love story, nonetheless, stays between Elphaba and Glinda. To the script’s credit score, their bond is strained however by no means snapped — their friendship has an admirable elasticity. Each need what’s greatest for one another and for Oz. Alas, they’ll’t agree on tips on how to get it: fisticuffs or flattery.

Elphaba, a fighter toughened by a lifetime of merciless, arduous luck, needs to sort out the tyrannical Wizard head-on and expose him as a phony who props up his clout by convincing the Ozians (sure, Ozians) to subjugate speaking animals. In contrast, toxically naive Glinda is satisfied that everybody may very well be variety if she drizzled them with honey. At its core, “For Good” asks if it’s higher to inform the ugly reality or put a fairly face on issues. Intriguingly, it leans towards the latter.

Together with her butterfly lashes and hair bleached an unnatural shade of news-anchor blonde, Grande couldn’t look extra synthetic. But, the phony look fits her — Glinda is burdened by being the glad face of the Wizard’s regime. Grande has practiced doing this type of lovable ditz since her teen years on Nickelodeon and I’m undecided if she will be able to play some other form of half. However she’s marvelously humorous right here, making her Glinda directly deeply honest and uproariously shallow. When she and Elphaba brawl, Grande hurl-plops onto her rival like a cupcake in a meals combat. When bereft, she even manages to sadly tip-tap her tiny toes up a staircase.

That tune, a brand new quantity known as “The Woman within the Bubble,” is staged in a single whirling monitoring shot. The CG is just too artificial to be actually spectacular, however you must admire cinematographer Alice Brooks’ ambition to crowd extra razzle-dazzle right into a film the place even the background characters are costumed like high fashion lily pads. Typically, the digicam is just too untethered from its environment to soak up the small print or the feelings. Swooshing and circling dizzily across the actors, it deserves to have its tripod rusted to the bottom.

The static pictures have real affect, like a immobile picture of Glinda and Elphaba singing on reverse sides of a wall, every letting their bravery drop after they suppose they’ll’t be seen. Equally good is a protracted take that stays on Glinda’s teary face as, simply behind her and out of focus, the Wizard and Morrible hatch an assassination plot involving a tornado.

Regardless of realizing the house-crush is inevitable, you continue to can’t fairly imagine the film will undergo with it — particularly because the script has already sensitively adjusted one character’s destiny. To spare the PG viewers, Chu has swapped out the curling corpse toes for a second of mourning. Every loss of life or disfigurement lands with a splat. The scarecrow scenes are klutzy; the reveal of the Tin Man performs like a spoof of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” But, these welcome bitter jolts hold issues from getting too sugar-sweet.

“For Good” is a worthwhile return to Oz. The additional scenes and rejiggered duets justify the operating time (even when the 160-minute size of the primary movie stays unforgivable). The opposite newly added tune, “No Place Like House,” empowers Erivo to show Judy Garland’s well-known line right into a radicalized political anthem. “Assume the way you’ll grieve for all you’ll go away behind,” she sings to a herd of otters, koalas, flamingos, giraffes, bunnies and kangaroos fleeing Ouncesfor the security of the Yellow Brick Underground Railroad. I used to be moved. The beasts weren’t.

We by no means see the face of this movie’s Dorothy, however behind her again, the heroine is both handled as exasperating (“It’s simply that one highway the entire time,” Glinda trills impatiently) or moronic (“That mulish farm woman,” Elphaba sneers). Choose Dorothy by her actions and he or she’s one half political pawn, one half the heedless sociopath described in that notorious TV itemizing blurb who “kills the primary particular person she meets after which groups up with three strangers to kill once more.”

Youngsters who see this film earlier than the 1939 basic might by no means forgive Dorothy. Possibly there’s no going house in any case.