Lucy C.

A faithful and satisfying adaptation of the musical, updated for Gen Z. I (a Millennial Wicked fan) watched this with my Gen Z wife, who has previously said that Wicked sounds icky to her, and we were both riveted. The school dance even brought my wife to tears. A successful convert! The music is top notch. I'm often apprehensive about the singing in film adaptations of musicals, but the Wicked film brings a fresh and robust interpretation of its songs. Cynthia Erivo blows me away like no one has since I first heard the original Broadway recording. Ariana Grande sings in a pretty, flutey manner that perfectly suits her character. And some of the side characters (Elphaba's mom?!) give the best delivery of formerly forgettable bridge lines that I've ever heard. I have two quibbles with this film. The first is that some morally correct updates (mostly regarding ableism) make some of the themes less poignant for me. The show is supposed to be about fighting for civil rights! So please show me a world with flaws as deep as ours, so those themes can ring true in more than one carefully constructed way! The second is that they interrupted Defying Gravity with random film score interludes like 5 times. It messed up the way tension built up to the climax and didn't add anything that you haven't seen in every other movie of this decade. They should've let the flagship song speak for itself. But generally, I'm thrilled Wicked got such a great film adaptation, and I'm looking forward to the second act!

Gorgeous worldbuilding with rich ecological systems and fantastic yet biologically grounded creatures. Love it.

While the dialogue and characterization can often be ham-fisted, Strange World is audacious and delightful in its worldbuilding in a way that I've never seen from Disney before. If I had to describe this genre-bending piece, I might call it an environmentalist steampunk intergenerational family drama. If you're into worldbuilding or alien creatures and ecosystems, this movie is a treat. The stuff it has to say about parents and children is somewhat simplistic, but it does manage to contain more nuance than I expected. For better and for worse, this movie doesn't feel like Disney.