Wicked: For Good Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, and Michelle Yeoh.

Director: Jon M. Chu

What’s Good: Wicked: For Good is definitely a showpiece when it comes to production values, and so, every single frame is beautiful to look at and the ultimate Wizard of Oz experience when it comes to visuals.

What’s Bad: The film is slower than the first, and it feels, especially when the new songs don’t hit like the ones in the previous instalment ,and dialogue feels like a lot of filler.

Loo Break: Anywhere in the first act, as the film moves so slowly that you can probably go and come back and not miss anything.

Watch or Not?: If you loved the first one, then yes, you need to see this and close the cycle.

Language: English (with subtitles).

Available On: Theaters

Runtime: 137 Minutes

User Rating:

Opening:

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Script Analysis

Wicked: For Good is a solid film, there is no doubt about that, you just have to look at the powerful visuals, and the entire production value, but the script might be the weakest aspect of the film, especially when it comes to structure and dialogue, which affects the pacing, making the first two acts of this musical epic feel like it could do with a couple more drafts to make the story tighter, and the flow a lot more natural.

As it is, the first two acts move a snail’s pace, and the songs simply don’t match the quality and catchiness of the songs in the first two acts of the first film, here, the songs feel like they are there just to make the film longer, and it is hard to remember one that is simply memorable enough to sing along. Fans of the original musical will probably have a lot more fun with this aspect of the film, but as a newcomer, I did feel a drop in quality on the musical side.

The dialogue also does a lot of damage to the film, as it feels like everything is delivered in two or three lines that are too long, when it could have been conveyed in a simpler and more efficient way. It just doesn’t work, and while the actors do their best, the material doesn’t hold up. Nevertheless, some jokes here and there truly land, and the film does tell a compelling, complete story, which is a lot more than many other films do today.

The third act also feels quite rushed, and the connections to the original Wizard of Oz film, and the characters from that story deserved a lot more, because they are so legendary and iconic, that for some reason this movie feels like it should just move away from them as fast as it can, hurting the overall impact of the story, and the character growth.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Star Performance

Cynthia Erivo is quite solid in here, and she is plotwise, the main character, but let’s be real, this is the Ariana Grande show, who basically steals the show in every single scenes she is in, not only with her powerful voice but also with her solid acting abilities, she just has it, when it comes to presence, delivery and charisma.

The rest of the cast is quite good. Bailey does some terrifying things in the film and effectively creates all the darkness it needs, while Goldblum’s Oz is just right – nothing to talk about, but definitely his performance, along with the rest from all the other actors, doesn’t hurt the film; it elevates it.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Direction, Music

Jon M. Chu started as a relatively standard director. Still, he has definitely graduated to the big leagues with these two films, as the scale of everything just goes out of the window when it comes to the visuals and the camera’s placement, which is always in the perfect spot to show it. Really, the world-building that Chu and his team have created here is outstanding.

The music, as we said before isn’t as good or memorable as the first film which really hurts the experience because this is a musical and I thought the best was being safe for last in the song department, of course, it will be a matter of taste, as it is everything but this is definitely one of the biggest negative points for the film. Nevertheless, the performers are truly going out of their way to create something extraordinary, so there is really nothing to criticize regarding the actors, dancers and singers themselves.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: The Last Word

Wicked: For Good closes this adventure in a solid manner, although the overall package feels weaker than the first film, which is disappointing. However, Jon. M. Chu, his team, and his cast demonstrate that they truly care about the project, and it shows on the screen as the film finally delivers on being entertaining, grandiose, and visually stunning. It could have been better, but what is there is truly remarkable.

Wicked: For Good Trailer

Wicked: For Good releases on 21 November, 2025.

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Must Read: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Movie Review: The Strange Case Of A Sequel That Nobody Wanted & Many Had Already Forgotten!

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Near the end of Wicked: For Good, we at last get the song that gives this second part of the Broadway musical adaptation its sub-title. It’s a duet that serves as the emotional climax in the relationship between its two principal protagonists, the now-exiled-from-Oz “wicked witch” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and the tool-of-the-Wizard “good witch” Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera). The lyrics highlight the impact a profound relationship can have on you—“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better / But because I knew you / I have been changed for good”—and director Jon M. Chu directs it beautifully, offering reverse cuts in which the actors nail the emotional complexity between these two frenemies. It’s a lovely, tear-jerking scene—all the more notable because it’s one of the few things that’s vaguely recognizable from the source material.

The decision to break Wicked into two parts was always going to be fraught, because it essentially meant figuring out how to turn a two-and-a-half hour theatrical experience into two two-and-a-half hour movies. And the challenge facing the second movie was going to be even more difficult, since nearly every one of the show’s best, catchiest songs was found before intermission. Like the Scarecrow, Wicked: For Good was going to have to be stuffed with additional material just to keep it moving—and it 100 percent feels like it.

That’s a damned shame, because the story about scapegoating, propaganda and deciding whether or not to side with a manipulative regime certainly feels resonant, and clearly has been punched up to emphasize that idea. It’s there in one of the new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz, “No Place Like Home,” in which Elphaba sings “How do I love this place / That’s never loved me,” which accompanies the persecuted animals escaping via a literal underground road. It’s still there in the pointedly cynical lyrics sung by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) in “Wonderful” about “great man” mythologies. Wicked was always a tale about moral choices and twisting truth for power, and that idea hasn’t been stripped away.

It has, however, been seriously diluted. Filling out the running time involves packing in a lot of CGI busy-ness, from the opening attack by Elphaba on the enslaved-animal-driven construction of the Yellow Brick Road to the stampede of critters disrupting the wedding between Glinda and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox add a flashback back-story for Glinda involving her lack of magical talents, intended to make her focus on superficiality more sympathetic, and providing context for the second of the two new songs, “Girl in the Bubble”—a nice opportunity for performance moments for Grande-Butera, but otherwise utterly unnecessary to the character arc. On stage, Wicked’s second act was a ruthlessly efficient integration of familiar elements from The Wizard of Oz driving toward its resolution, even if that meant the songs were mostly narratively functional rather than irresistibly memorable. Wicked: For Good drags out every beat, making its considerably darker tone compared to the first half feel like even more of a slog.

There’s another moment near the end, one that almost exactly echoes the way the stage version presents the famous melting of the Wicked Witch as a shadow-play. The visual restraint of it is striking, in juxtaposition with the way Chu seems determined to make everything else about his Oz as big and gaudy as possible. Financially, it’s undoubtedly going to be a brilliant creative decision to get two Wicked box-office hits out of this story, even if that meant giving audiences a year-long intermission between acts one and two that blunts some of the callbacks in both the dialogue and the relationships. Everything was there in the original musical to make for a single great movie. I can say it wasn’t changed for the better. Because they knew how, it has been changed for greed.

This month marks 50 years since critics and A-list Chicago celebrities Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert debuted their movie review show.

The pair moved names and shows a few times in the over two decades they worked together on television, but to this day, the late critics define their very craft for all who have come since.

Siskel, then 29, was a Chicago native. He attended DeWitt Clinton Elementary School, at 6110 N. Fairfield Ave. in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, and developed his passion for the movies as a youngster as he would walk up to the Nortown Theatre, an old-school movie palace at 6320 N. Western Ave.

Siskel attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana for high school and graduated from Yale University in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. After working on a California political campaign and a stint in the Army Reserves, he joined the Chicago Tribune on Jan. 20, 1969.

While Siskel started out as a neighborhood news reporter and a staff writer in the Sunday department, he saw an opportunity when film critic Cliff Terry took a sabbatical for a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard University. Siskel wrote a memo to the Sunday editor promoting himself as a single voice to review movies, and quickly became the Tribune’s film critic.

In 1974, Siskel expanded to television, joining CBS Chicago as the movie critic for Channel 2 News. Appearing regularly on the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts, Siskel reviewed films, reported features, and conducted celebrity interviews live in the sprawling newsroom that doubled as Channel 2’s on-air set. He had a unique chemistry with the close-knit evening team that also included anchors Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson, weathermen John Coughlin and Harry Volkman, and sports director Johnny Morris.

Siskel also met his wife, newscast producer Marlene Iglitzen, at Channel 2.

Ebert, 33 when he was paired with Siskel, was a native of downstate Urbana, Illinois. He attended St. Mary’s Catholic School in Champaign for elementary school, and spent Sunday afternoons at kids’ matinees at the Princess Theater. As a high school student, he was moved by “Citizen Kane.”

Ebert attended the University of Illinois in his hometown, where he earned a bachelor of journalism and worked on the Daily Illini newspaper. He came to Chicago to become a features writer for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966, and took over as film critic when reviewer Eleanor Keane departed in April 1967.

Ebert did not have a separate regular television gig like Siskel when their show started, but the New Yorker noted that he had hosted a series of Ingmar Bergman films on television in 1973. Ebert also went on to serve as movie critic for Chicago’s NBC 5 and later ABC 7.

He married Chaz Ebert in 1992.

At public television station WTTW-Channel 11, producer Thea Flaum paired Siskel and Ebert together for what started out as a monthly special called “Opening Soon at a Theatre Near You.” The inaugural episode aired on Nov. 23, 1975 — with Siskel sporting a large mustache and Ebert a moptop.

As quoted by Matt Fagerholm of RogerEbert.com, Siskel said on the first show: “The point of our show is to sort of be a news magazine about movies. We want to show you what’s playing in town, what’s coming to town, and also maybe take you behind the scenes and show you a little bit about the movie business.”

Fagerholm noted that the pair looked not like stereotypically polished TV hosts, but like the pair of journalists from the Midwest that they were. Their personalities were what stood out.

“As Siskel and Ebert discussed — and more often than not, argued over — the week’s new theatrical releases, they could be funny, temperamental, impassioned, and never less than achingly human,” Fagerholm wrote.

The WTTW show was renamed “Sneak Previews” in 1977 and went into national syndication.

In 1982, Siskel and Ebert left public broadcasting. “Sneak Previews” went on without them — with movie critics Jeffrey Lyons and Neal Gabler taking their place, and Michael Medved replacing Gabler soon afterward. Meanwhile, Siskel and Ebert moved to Tribune Entertainment and a new show, “At the Movies,” which aired locally on WGN.

In 1986, the critics made their final move, switching to Buena Vista Television for a new show, “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies” — later shortened to “Siskel & Ebert.” This final and most famous show was taped from the old CBS Chicago headquarters at 630 N. McClurg Ct., in the historic Studio 1, where the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debate had been held in 1960.

From the beginning, Siskel and Ebert offered movies a thumbs-up or thumbs-down (or, earlier in their run, a simple “yes” or “no” recommendation).

Not everyone was a fan of the pair’s combative approach. In the March-April 1990 issue of Film Comment magazine, as recounted in the New Yorker, writer Richard Corliss wrote of “Siskel & Ebert: “This is, shall we say, no film university of the air. The program does not dwell on shot analysis, or any other kind of analysis. It is a sitcom (with its own noodling, toodling theme song) starring two guys who live in a movie theater and argue all the time. Oscar Ebert and Felix Siskel.”

But as Richard Brody wrote for the New Yorker in 2023, the combative and competitive nature of the men’s on-air chemistry was the very appeal. He quoted Ebert in the critic’s own memoir: “Not a thought was given to our chemistry. We just had it, because from the day the Chicago Tribune made Gene its film critic, we were professional enemies. We never had a single meaningful conversation before we started to work on our TV program.”

This week, Screen Crush posted a list what it deemed the 50 best Siskel and Ebert movie reviews for the 50th anniversary of Siskel and Ebert’s pairing. Writer Matt Singer brought to life just how blunt and scathing the men could be, even when they agreed.

Reviewing the 1980 movie “Why Would I Lie?” Ebert said, “This movie is not simply a bad movie. This movie is an insult to the intelligence of everyone in the audience. I hated it.”

Siskel said, “Someone ought to punch him out. That’s the kind of reaction — I mean we’re both kind of violent right now — that’s the kind of reaction that this picture generates.”

Siskel died at the age of 53 on Feb. 20, 1999, after battling a brain tumor. He remained in his seat next to Ebert, and on the set at CBS Chicago, until the end.

After Siskel died, Ebert continued the show with a rotation of guest critics until Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper took over alongside him in 2000. Roeper also succeeded Siskel as CBS Chicago’s movie critic for a while. Ebert and Roeper stepped back from the show in 2008.

Meanwhile, Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, and oral cancer in 2006. Surgeons cut out part of his lower jaw during surgery, and complications left him unable to speak, eat, or drink.

In 2012, back at WTTW-Channel 11 again, Ebert’s name appeared on a new show, “Ebert Presents At the Movies.” Critics Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Mubi.com took over as hosts, while Ebert served as co-producer and wrote a weekly segment that was read by former CBS Chicago anchorman Bill Kurtis.

Ebert died April 4, 2013, at the age of 70.

The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events is honoring the anniversary of Siskel and Ebert’s historic television pairing with a series of screenings every Wednesday this month. Screenings began Nov. 5 with “Eve’s Bayou,” followed by “Breaking Away,” on Nov. 12. A screening of the 1989 Gus Van Sant film “Drugstore Cowboy” is coming up Wednesday, Nov. 19.

On Saturday, Nov. 22, Zack Mast and Stephen Winchell will portray Ebert and Siskel, respectively, for a live performance with movie scenes, quarrels, and a live band. Channel 11’s Geoffrey Baer will introduce the event and the Tribune’s Rick Kogan will host a conversation between WTTW “Sneak Previews” producers Thea Flaum and Michelle McKenzie-Voigt.

On Tuesday, Nov. 25, the series concludes with a screening of “Lone Star” (1996).

All events take place in the Claudia Cassidy Theater at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.