WICKED

Here's the honest tension: this is a well-made, often moving musical with real craft behind it — and it's also a story that reworks a beloved American classic into something murkier about good and evil.

The cast sings and acts well, and the friendship at the film's center is genuine and touching. But the film is slow to find its footing, occasionally dull and overblown, and stacks in adult themes — implied adultery, political corruption, romantic entanglements — that push it well past family-friendly territory despite its PG rating.

If you're an adult who loves the musical and can weigh its worldview with discernment, it has real merit. If you're deciding for a family movie night, this isn't it — and it's better watched at home, where you can pause and talk through what you're seeing, than celebrated as a theater outing.

The practical answer: watch it at home, with adult eyes open, not as a family trip to Oz.

Long before she became the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba was just a misunderstood girl with green skin and magical powers she couldn't control. At Shiz University, she clashes with Galinda, the school's most popular and shallow student — until rivalry turns into an unlikely friendship. Together, the two young women stumble onto something darker: a plot to silence and cage every talking animal in Oz. What they choose to do about it is where the story — and the surprises — begin.

Three stars means this: real spectacle and real heart, undercut by pacing problems and songs that don't all land. The cast — especially Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande — carries the two biggest numbers, "Popular" and "Defying Gravity," with genuine skill. But the opening song is dull and bombastic, its lyrics nearly impossible to make out, and the story doesn't truly come alive until Prince Fiyero arrives and the love triangles kick in.

The result is a film that's sometimes dull, sometimes overblown, and a little too pat in how neatly it resolves its rivalries. It's enjoyable and occasionally spectacular — but not consistently so.

This is a mixed pagan worldview, and it earns that caution honestly. The film carries strong Romantic, politically correct, and feminist currents, along with an animal-rights subplot that gets folded into a broader story about resisting tyranny. Its biggest worldview problem is moral relativism: where the original Wizard of Oz drew clean lines between good and evil, this story insists the "Wicked" Witch was never simply wicked, and that the Wizard's evil is society's fault more than his own choice. That's a real departure from the moral clarity of the story it's borrowing.

On the other side of the ledger, there's real good here. The friendship between Elphaba and Glinda survives their differences and their rivalry — a genuine celebration of loyalty. Selflessness is rewarded over selfishness. And when Elphaba finally casts a spell from a grimoire, it brings painful, unintended consequences — a rare pop-culture acknowledgment that witchcraft has a cost. There's even a brief, positive reference to Heaven.

One further note for discerning viewers: the film includes a supporting character clearly written as gay, and some critics have read a romantic subtext into Elphaba and Glinda's friendship — a reading we don't think the text requires, but families should know the conversation exists.

The film's blurred vision of good and evil is exactly what Scripture warns against — "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20) — yet the friendship at its heart still echoes something true and good: "A friend loves at all times" (Proverbs 17:17).

Wicked has real talent and a real friendship at its center — but it also reworks a beloved story into something morally murkier, and stacks in enough adult content that a PG rating shouldn't fool you. Our answer: wait for home — adults only. Looking for something the whole family can watch together this week? Start here:.