You know life is tough when you’re in Melbourne for the weekend and you run out of films to see at the Cinema Nova because you’ve already seen them all.

I agonised over it but I felt duty-bound to go and see Wicked as a cultural activity. It’s not really my kind of film – I don’t like big budget mainstream films, I don’t like musicals particularly, and I was turned off a little bit by the amount of promotion and merchandising and adulation over it. My expectations were pretty low, particularly as it was three hours long. I thought it might be a lot of padding and a lot of singing and a fair bit of sentimentality and cheesiness. I was wrong. I will admit it, I really enjoyed it.

I think what really elevated it above other Disney-esque family movies is the characterisation of the two leads. Ariana Grande plays Galinda, or Glinda as she’s more commonly known, and Cynthia Erivo plays the lead Elphaba. They both of course have excellent singing chops but what I wasn’t expecting was how good they were at playing their parts and also how much humour was inherent in their roles.

Glinda in particular is like a mishmash of all the Mean Girls with a dash of Elle Woods, and Grande makes her funny, likeable but also clearly not the perfect ideal that we know from The Wizard of Oz. Erivo is the star though and she gives us a strong and contemporary heroine that reframes centuries of misogynistic witch tropes. 

Michelle Yeoh is deliciously odious as Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum could have been born to play the Wizard. 

By the spectacular finale, I was there for every marvellous CGI flourish and Erivo belting high note. A delightful three hours. Although there is set to be Part II and I hope they don’t ruin it.