Ben O'Shea Reviews: 'Wicked'

Today Ben O’Shea tells us all about the highly anticipated and talked about film-adaptation of the award winning musical ‘Wicked’.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great to flick with ben o'she good morning, much good morning.
Big couple of weeks, big blogbuster movies. Yeah, it's going
to just keep going all the way to Christmas as
we get into the summer blockbuster season in America. But
this one we're talking about today one of the most
anticipated films of the year, the adaptation of the hit

(00:20):
musical Wicked. Do you know how much money the Wicked
Musical has made at the global box office? I love
six billion dollars. It's billion since it's Broadway taboo in
two thousand and three, so a lot of people love it.
You know, all the big songs like popular and defined
Gravity and it's the theater show is coming to Perth

(00:40):
I think in the next month. Yes, But the film
is out now, directed by John m chu who did
he did In the Heights, which was another musical adaptation
a couple of years ago that no one saw but
was actually really amazing, which is actually really good. It
came out during the pandemic and just it just was
one of those it got kind of lost in the
fusser on that. But so that's the movie. Can you

(01:05):
sum up a global pandemic like that? Anyway? Let's move along,
move along, move along, okay, And so so the musical
movie of Wicked stars Ariana Grande pop star as Glinda
the Good, and Cynthia Arrivo, who's Oscar nominee, as Alphaba.
Because this is an origin story of the Wicked Witch
of the West from the Wizard of Oz. You know,

(01:27):
so you're talking about one hundred and twenty five year
old kind of source material here and the Wicked Musical
kind of refreshed that reimagined it. So is she that's right,
that's right, Alphaba who's the green one, and Glinda the
Good dressed in pink. And so going to this, going
into this, like we knew that Cynthia Arrivo was a

(01:47):
great actor. She was in that biopic Harriet. She's won
a Tony, she's won a Grammy, she had that Oscar nomination.
She sees a legit, legit actor, and she brings that
to this role really, like you watch it go. This
is a serious dramatic performance here, even though she's a
green witch. And but the big surprise for me, the

(02:09):
revelation was that Ariana Grande is actually hilarious, ultimately funny.
I interviewed her, she wasn't that funny when I spoke
to him, Ty, Yeah, it was a love fest, like
you know, and this is this is this is a
movie about, you know, the relationship between these two women
who find themselves in this very difficult situation where the

(02:32):
society of Oz is under threat because of you know,
like these forces that are trying to divide and conquer
and maybe the wizard played by Jeff Goldblum is not
such a nice guy. You've got Oscar winner Michelle Yoh
as sort of the sort of the one of the
lecturers at a Hogwarts style school. It's there's a lot
of really Harry Potter vibes you're watching it. But fans

(02:55):
of the musical will be happy to know that no
expense was spared to bring this production to the screen.
Like this is the most lavishly produced big screen musical
in the history of cinema. Like we're talking two hundred
million dollars they spent on it. There was one set
that was as big as two American football fields, if
you can imagine the scale of that, and so some

(03:17):
of these musical numbers you're watching it on the screen, going,
this has got to be CG effects because it stretches
as far as you can see, hundreds and hundreds of performers,
but it was all real live action, and they sang
the songs live, which just doesn't happen. So when you're
watching the movie, you seeing Ariana Grande belting out these songs,
you can see the muscles in her neck straining to

(03:37):
hit the notes, which is it's incredible, But it's a
part one of two, and that's one of the problems
of the film. It's you know, any time when you
have a movie that is split into two, the conclusion
Penny is not quite so satisfying. It kind of ends
where the musical hits intermission on that defining Gravity song,
which is an incredible musical number in the film, But

(03:58):
then it ends and you're just like, I've got to
wait till next year to see how this is going
to finish. I'm not a fan of the two parts,
and I'm not either, so I've got to kno it series.
I've got to knock it down a little bit for
it's like binge, yeah, you want to keep going, yeah, yeah,
all right, Well, how many pay no attention to the
man behind the cursions giving it? Yeah, Like in other ways,

(04:19):
It's a very very special film and certainly fans of
the musical will love it. I'm going to give this
one for four. Yeah, so are you, and you're knocking
it down. But that's how that's how good it is.
The production is insane. This this willredible, Like I wouldn't
be surprised that all off it wins six seven oscars. Yeah,
a lot of technical technical, Best Self Design, Best Costume,

(04:41):
Like I think there's a really good chance Ariana and
Cynthia both get Oscar nominations out of this. I'll get
Globe nominations gets a lower Yeah. That trend of filmmakers
going back to actually putting real people in real sets. Yeah,
that's that's really helped me. Very interesting. Yeah, thanks guys,
see you next week.