Wicked

Story time…so, this movie came out a week after my first kid was born. While my wife and I both wanted to see it, that obviously wasn’t going to happen for a while. We went to see Sonic 3 as a trial run a month and a half ago to see if he could be good in a theater (he actually was great, but pooped once and had to be taken out), so we decided there was no way we’d be able to sit through an almost 3 hour movie without taking him out.  So, we decided we would just preorder the 4K disc and watch it at home together so we could pause it and all that. On principle, I don’t believe in renting digital movies for like $25 bucks, so we waited patiently. It was actually supposed to release today (Feb 4), but it came yesterday a day early. So, we decided to make a movie night out of it. We bought a couple pizzas and invited some people over.  We FINALLY sat down to watch the movie when 5 minutes in, he started crying because he was hungry. So we took a 20ish minute break to deal with that and then started it again. 15 minutes after that he pooped, so we had to pause it again to change him. We started it again and about half an hour later he pooped again. By this point, we’ve paused it 3 times in about 40 minutes of movie time. After the second poop, he was actually pretty chill. Unfortunately, 20 minutes later (during “Dancing through Life”), our brand new 4K disc ended up skipping (I looked at the disc and saw part of the plastic part of the disc on the back was somehow peeling off), so I put in the brand new Blu-ray (not scratched) and we watched another hour before my baby decided he was hungry again. We took another half hour or so to feed him, and at this point, three of the people who came decided to go home (homework and all of that). We finally started it again (and then paused it 10 minutes later to make him another bottle that he then refused to eat), but after that final pause, we watched the rest of the movie without stopping. We started this thing at 5 last night, the credits didn’t roll on our tv until almost 9:30 after all was said and done. Given ALL of that, I actually really liked this. Ariana Grande was excellent, playing both the dramatic and comedic sides of the role extremely well. She definitely deserves the Oscar over Saldaña. Cynthia Erivo was excellent as well, and really made you feel for the one who will eventually become one of the greatest villains in cinematic history. The songs were great and the movie was overall a blast. I do agree that the color palette looked undersaturated and unnecessarily dark, which makes no sense at all given this is a prequel to a movie where color is one of the most important parts of that movie, but that’s alright. All of the flaws of this movie were laid to rest when “Defying Gravity” started. I’ve never seen the play or heard the songs before, and this was a sight to behold. The last 10 minutes of this turned this into a 5 star movie for me. If this wins Best Picture, I would be very happy and think it to be well deserved. Here’s hoping Part 2 is just as good! I ended up re-ordering another copy of the 4K. Hopefully my wife and I will be able to watch it with minimal pausing before Part 2 releases.