571: Wicked / Letterboxd Reviews / Top 10 Musical Movies

[00:00:00] Ariana Grande saying, Dearest Moms in Popsicle. That sort of stuff I was actually laughing out loud at. And so it was very charming, kind of feel-good movie, but had some good drama and good ideas. I'll help you be popular. You'll hang with the right- Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Film Buds Podcast. This is episode number 571. And my name is Henry. And I'm Elle. This time around, we are going to be tackling Wicked, the movie. Whoa.

[00:00:28] And then we will be doing Letterboxd Reviews as normal. And then finally counting down our top 10 musical movies or movie musicals, depending on your philosophical perspective. So thanks as always for joining us. Rate, review, subscribe now. What are you doing if you haven't yet? So be sure to do that. And thank you to all those who have. And if you haven't checked out our YouTube page, please do that.

[00:00:57] We're everywhere. And- You can't escape. Yeah. How you doing? Doing all right. How about you? Pretty good. Yeah, I mean, nothing too crazy. I'm trying to think if we have had anything big happen. Not really. I mean, it's been kind of boring in our personal lives. Yeah. Well, anything new with your photography business? Anything new? Any big, big things?

[00:01:23] I'm working on the second issue of my photography magazine I created a while back. Um, and that should be out at the end of March. So, in a little bit. Nice. Oh, I actually worked with a local author, which is kind of fun. Yeah, I guess if we don't have much else to say, let's go ahead and get Wicked. And we do have a clip, so take a listen.

[00:01:53] The tallest case I've yet to face Don't worry, I'm determined to succeed All right, so Wicked is now available for rent and purchase.

[00:02:20] It is directed by John M. Chu, who also did Crazy Rich Asians. And he's doing part two of Wicked as well. And stars Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh. And the synopsis is kind of a long one here. Misunderstood because of her green skin, a young woman named Elphaba forges an unlikely but profound friendship with Glinda,

[00:02:50] a student with an unflinching desire for popularity. Following an encounter with the Wizard of Oz, their relationship reaches a crossroad as their lives begin to take very different paths. Whoa. Pretty heavy there. Well, we saw this one. We are a little late to doing this, sorry, but we did see this one in theaters when it came out and did very well in all ways, really.

[00:03:17] And part two is coming out in November of this year. So it should be around the same time as part two came out. Yeah. Well, now you're the Wicked head. Yeah. And so do you want to kick things off? Sure. Well, I do have to say, you know, something has changed within me. Oh. Something is not the same since I've seen Wicked.

[00:03:44] You know, coming from someone who has seen Wicked on Broadway multiple times, I thought I would be disappointed. And I was not. It exceeded my expectations. And it was just overall amazing. I had goosebumps the entire movie.

[00:04:12] And, you know, if you saw it on Broadway, you would know that they really did it justice. And basically the, you know, the whole script is what is on Broadway. The whole, pretty much the whole choreography is what's on Broadway. Which, you know, I thought they were going to change it a lot. And they didn't. And I was really happy about that. And I thought I would be disappointed with Ariana Grande's performance.

[00:04:42] How dare you? I know. I thought I was, but I was not. Mm-hmm. I really was shocked at how great she was as Glinda and how much she did the character justice and how much she is the Glinda. And I think Popular was amazing. Rumor has it that the high kick that she did in Popular,

[00:05:09] that was kind of improv on her part. But at the end of the day, I'm really glad she wasn't Elphaba because I, I don't know. I just, I can't see her as Elphaba. Not that she wouldn't do a good job, but she's just so, so Glinda. And moving on to Cynthia's performance, her voice, especially in Defying Gravity, if you know, you know.

[00:05:36] And yeah, I have no complaints other than one. The lack of chemistry between her and Jonathan Bailey, slash Fierro. Yeah, I just, I don't know. It's supposed to be more chemistry there than it was. I'll be interested to see the continued connection there. Maybe it builds in the second act.

[00:06:03] I know there is a steamy performance with Elphaba and Fierro in Act 2. So I'm kind of interested to see how that develops. But speaking of Jonathan Bailey, literally no complaints other than the lack of chemistry between him and Cynthia. The set design, they planted how many tulips? I don't know. It was like a... A lot.

[00:06:33] A lot. But yeah, they were real tulips in the beginning. I think the marketing on Wicked was pretty, pretty great. It reminded me of the marketing on Beetlejuice 2. And I'm just counting down the days for part two. Yeah. All right. What about you? What did you think? Because you're not a big Broadway head. Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's not that I don't like, Broadway.

[00:07:03] I just, I've never been in an area or that much adjacent to the Broadway world. So I just haven't had, I've seen some and I do like it when I see it, but I just, it's a lot of work. You gotta get all dressed up. Then you gotta go and... Well, you don't have to get dressed up. Well, they prefer you to. Anyways. So I've never seen the Broadway show. I've seen Wizard of Oz many times and I love that. So that's really my only, and I've seen Oz, the Great and Powerful.

[00:07:29] And so I'm definitely aware of the world, just not as much of Wicked. And so I didn't really know what the overall plot was or the dynamics or anything. And I really liked it as well. Not perfect for me. It was on my top 10 list though. And I thought that, as you said, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Eriva were great performance-wise, musical-wise, and they were good together.

[00:07:56] The special effects and the production design and all that, I thought were, I didn't really see any flaws. I thought the ending, it's always good to have a great ending in a movie. And it's honestly kind of rare you get that these days, but I thought the final 20 or so minutes where she takes flight, let's say, and things do start to explode a little bit. I thought that was amazing and was really intense and thrilling. And it was great seeing it in IMAX too.

[00:08:25] So I thought it ended very well and made me really want to see part two. The meeting or the school that they go to, I thought that all was pretty fun. And I liked the dialogue. You know, it's pretty funny too. And I like Peter Dinklage as the, I think he's a goat or something. He was good. Jeff Goldblum as Oz was good later on in the movie. It is pretty long.

[00:08:51] Like, I think it did feel occasionally a little long, but there's so much there that I wasn't really thinking it felt extended or needlessly bloated, but it was, I think it's over two and a half hours. So you do kind of have to devote an evening to it, but still a great movie, I thought. And trying to think of some, I mean, all the dance numbers, like the one I remember is that

[00:09:17] one where they're in some sort of, people are like spinning all around. It's like a wooden room and they're... Oh, Dancing Through Life? Yeah, I thought that was one of the better ones. The look of Oz, the fake head, and then you see it's actually this Oz like in the background. That was pretty enjoyable and all the looks of those rooms. Any kind of other bigger points? Any specific standout scenes or...

[00:09:45] Well, I feel like I should touch on this after I see part two, but I didn't hate that they split it up into two parts, but... And I know because of money, you know, that's why they probably split it up into two parts. But I would have liked if it was like one big movie. Yeah. Because, you know, they could have just split it up like The Sound of Music, like, you know, Intermission.

[00:10:16] And I don't know, I really wanted them to do that, but whatever. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, it's... We're in that day and age where they're going to do that in pretty much all cases, but... Because I feel like there's going to be a lot to explore in the second part. It's not just going to be repeating everything. And it's definitely one of the better musicals of the last four or five years. Not that we've had a lot, but one of the better ones. Yep, I agree. What did you rate it? I gave it a four and a half.

[00:10:45] Four and a half. What, uh... You know, got the half. Eh, just that runtime. Okay. Yeah, let's look at it. Well, I rated it a five. Yeah, figure. All right, well, let's move on to some letterboxed reviews of Wicked. As always, you can... If you want to have yours read, or if you have a suggestion for an upcoming episode so you can have your review read for that, please let us know.

[00:11:12] And any contact information in the show notes, on social media, on Letterboxd, or if you don't have a Letterboxd account, which you should get one, but if you don't, you can just send us a, you know, three, four sentence written review of your own, and we'll do our best to get on the show. So... All right, first one. You got it? All right, this is coming from Ellie. She rated it a four star.

[00:11:38] And she said, you have got to be miserable as fuck to hate this movie. And I agree. Sure. Will Minaker gave it two out of five and says, I saw this movie a few hours ago and can't remember a single song. There were a few things I liked aside from the music, costumes, performances, humor, and general look. Like, Erivo and Grande both have great voices.

[00:12:06] Also, was not expecting a significant part of the plot to be a civil rights analogy with talking animals. Whoa. Well, he clearly did not see it on Broadway. Or maybe read anything about the musical. All right. So... All right. This one is coming from Patrick Dougal. He rated it five stars. And he said, I'm already seated for part two.

[00:12:36] The theater employees are scared and asking me to leave because it's not November 2025 yet. But I'm simply two seated. That's going to be a long wait. All right. Last one is from Marmar. Gave it three out of five and says, I hate to be that guy, but the color grading on this is hideous. With the production design, costumes, sets, gardens, et cetera. Very specific there. The gardens were disaster. Sounds like your mom. Yeah.

[00:13:05] Every piece of the frame should be bursting with vibrant colors. But it is. The film crew... The film crew put all this time and effort into making this movie look and feel magical. Yet, they have it looking washed out like gray sludge. Okay. Excuse me. I don't think it looks like gray sludge. Wait. Hold on. Excuse me, Marmar. It was very vivid. I don't know what this person's talking about. I thought it was too. Sorry. It was very vivid, vibrant.

[00:13:34] Magical. And magical. And I love the gardens. I did love the gardens. Yeah. So... All right. Well, with all that done, let's end off with our top 10 musical movies. Okay. What do you say? Do you say movie musicals or do you say musical movies? Dude, I don't know. Okay. It doesn't matter. I think I say musical movies. It's like the debate of GIF or GIF.

[00:14:04] It's like, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. But see, GIF is the peanut butter company. But everyone knows what you're talking about. Okay. I... Or I think we both... I used to... As I've said before, I used to hate musicals when I was a kid. It's like, why are they breaking the song? How dare you? Yeah. And so I just didn't really get it. And then when I got more into movies, I grew to like them more and more. And I really like them now. So I have nothing against musicals. And...

[00:14:33] Well, you clearly were not a glee kid. No, I wasn't. I wasn't. Yeah. None of that. But... And you love musicals as well. Oh, yeah. So I think we're both... I think we both probably have some good lists here. Okay. All right. This might be shocking that this is my number 10. But with all the musicals out there, you know, I put this at the very bottom just because

[00:15:00] it's not a Broadway musical. Because that's kind of what I was going off of and like award winning and everything like that that I love dearly. So I put number 10, Nightmare Before Christmas. Okay. One of your favorites? It is one of my favorites. But like, I feel bad for putting it number 10. But... All right. Well, there were a lot of ones that could be technically like 10.

[00:15:29] And so it was kind of hard to really judge. I just tried to find ones that maybe stuck with me more or something like that. But my number 10 is the remake of West Side Story that Steven Spielberg won from a couple years ago where Rachel Zegler became a star. Are you a Zegler? I'm not actually. I like her a lot in that one, but I actually don't really like her much since. Sorry. Oof. Yes. Not yet. Maybe she'll grow on me. I don't know.

[00:15:59] Sorry, Rachel. Just very good movie. A good remake. And it's one that it did come out in COVID. So it flopped financially, but which is too bad. So I feel like it's kind of been swept under the rug. But it's on Disney Plus if you haven't seen it. All right. You're number nine. Number nine, Beauty and the Beast. The... Which one? The animated one or the live action one? Oh, the animated one, of course. Just check. Duh. Just good movie, you know, classic. Oh, sorry.

[00:16:30] Yeah. I mean, it's always been my favorite Disney princess movie. And I actually, fun fact, did see it on Broadway when I was very, very little. And I loved it. So, yeah. That's a good one. All right. Well, my number nine is Sweeney Todd, which was just recently on my top 10 Tim Burton list. One of the bloodiest musicals out there, but effectively so. You could say it's a bloody good governor.

[00:16:59] I could say that, but anyways, yeah. So just great movie. Number eight for me is Into the Woods. Into the Woods. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I was surprised when it came out that I actually liked it that much. You know, catchy tunes and did the Broadway musical justice by turning into a live action. Yeah. And also...

[00:17:29] Great cast. Great cast. Johnny Depp is a sexy wolf. You know, he makes the voice just kind of sexy. Yeah. I agree. Hot take. No, I mean, I think he has that kind of unnatural, like not unnatural, but not necessarily perfect voice that makes it more kind of raw and interesting. Yeah. I agree. All right. My number eight is The Wizard of Oz. You know, just a... Of course, it's a classic. It's not one that I watch frequently, but whenever I do watch it, I love it. Okay.

[00:17:58] Number seven for me is Chicago Pops. I just watched that one for the first time about a year ago. Oh, okay. Yeah. Did you... I liked it. Okay. It would be on my list. Spoiler, but I did like it. Okay. Yeah. It's a solid watch. All right. Number seven for me is Nightmare Before Christmas. Okay. All right, King. Yeah.

[00:18:26] Number six for me is La La Land. I saw it for the first time, what, like a year ago? Oh, I didn't know yet. Or two years ago? Oh, I didn't know that. I've seen clips of it. It's one of those movies where, you know, the clips of it are everywhere and it seems very overrated. And then you watch it for the first time and you're like, wow, I can see why people are so obsessed with this movie. One of the most fan-favorited movies on Letterboxd of all time. Oh, I did not know that.

[00:18:56] But total side note, now I, you know, whenever I want to watch a movie, I look on Letterboxd and like, is it rated high? And whenever it's rated like 3.8, 3.9, 4.0, I love it. So. Well, usually they're pretty good at them. Not always. Well, now I'm becoming like a huge like Letterboxd rating. I'm telling you. You know. If you don't have one, you gotta get on it. Yeah. It is great. All right.

[00:19:24] Well, number six for me is Spike Lee's Shy Rack from about 10 years ago, which is like a hip hop rap musical that takes place in modern day Chicago and is commenting on all the gun and racial violence in Chicago, but a really underrated musical and done very differently and one that more people should watch because it's not only good music, but it does comment on good things.

[00:19:51] I've never watched it, so I'm going to have to give it a watch. You? Number five for me is Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. It's a classic. If you haven't watched it, you need to. I mostly watched it just because of all of the Glee references. It's like talking about, you know, favorite movie all the time without even seeing it and seeing what all the hype is.

[00:20:17] So gave it a watch during high school and I just, I was like, man, I see why they mentioned this musical on Glee all the time. Yeah. And it was kind of funny. It was kind of funny because in Glee, Lea Michele plays Funny Girl on Broadway and then

[00:20:45] she actually was Funny Girl on Broadway a few years back. That's kind of funny. Yeah. She's a funny girl. I guess she is a funny girl. Funny woman, you know? Yeah. All right. Well, my number five is Wicked, which we just talked about. Whoa. Check out that review. Number four for me, I feel like not a lot of people have seen this musical, but I saw it on Broadway once.

[00:21:14] I've seen the movie a few times, but Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Oh, yeah. It's a rock musical and it's, oh my God, it's amazing. Very ahead of its time, I do have to say, it's about a transgender woman trying to turn into a woman.

[00:21:37] And she's one of the first people who did the bottom surgery and like when they were kind of first testing it out and it did not go well. And now she has the Angry Inch. Hence the title. Yeah, I saw it on Broadway. It was amazing. The ending, like you will cry. Oh, chef's kiss. It's amazing.

[00:22:06] I really would love to see it again on Broadway. What's number four for you? Four for me is Les Mis, the 2012 remaker adaptation of the famous book. And do you want to sing the Anne Hathaway song? No, she did. I'm queuing you. I'm queuing you. She did a good job. And I did review it at some point last year. And the only thing that brings it down is Russell Crowe. Terrible.

[00:22:33] So, but otherwise a great epic movie that I wish we had more of. Very ambitious. All the singing is live. You know, so there's a lot of great things except for old Russell. It's just so sad. I know it's meant to be okay, but it's just... Well, it has kind of an inspiring ending. You know, they made it through this revolution and they... I mean, most of them died, but they seem happy at the end. All right. Moving on. All right. Number three?

[00:23:02] Number three for me is Wicked. Nice. And we just did that. Nice. Go check it out. All right. Number three for me is The Lion King. The original. The animated one. Just, I mean, what can you say? All right. Number two? Number two for me is The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not the remake. I just want to make that clear. Not the horrible remake. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:32] The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a fucking classic. And I love... Like, I know it's bad. I know it gets a bad rap and is made fun of a lot. Even at the kind of, quote, live shows, if you've ever been a part of the punk Rocky crowd. I feel like it's meant to be made fun of, but in a good way. You know?

[00:24:00] I think it's intentionally over the top, so I think it's... Yeah. You know? But again, like, ahead of its time. Also, I don't know what it is about me that loves musicals about trans people. The bending? Yeah. I find it inspiring, and I feel like there should be more of that. Especially, you know, today. Yeah. Agreed. All right. Number two for you? All right. Number two for me, maybe a hot take, it is Joker 2. Joker 2.

[00:24:29] I love Joker 2. It's on my top 10 list, and I've watched it a couple times since, and I love it more and more. I love Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in it, and I love the musical numbers. No, I mean, I love Lady Gaga 2. Like, I'm a mega super fan of Lady Gaga, but that would not be in my top 10. All right. And number one musical for you of all time? All right, drumroll please. Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

[00:24:57] My number one is The Wizard of Oz. It's always been a favorite of mine since I was two, if you can believe it or not. I used to just watch it all the time. I was terrified of The Wicked Witch of the West. I actually went to the land of Oz in Boone, I think, or Mountain, is it Mountain Beach? I think it's Mountain Beach, North Carolina. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure.

[00:25:24] Yeah, well, it's either in Boone or Mountain Beach, North Carolina, but it's in the mountains, and they actually do have a yellow brick road and cast members and everything. And I remember that when I was two years old because it was so fun. It was so magical. The Wicked Witch of the West scared me so much, but then gave me these little plastic wrap toys. Yeah. All right.

[00:25:54] So if you're ever in North Carolina, you should go visit that. It's only open, I believe, in September, October, like the fall months. But anyway, you should definitely go. All right. All right. Well, number one for me is La La Land. Whoa. Which I liked when it first came out, and I've watched it maybe two or three times since. And it was one that I, I mean, I still think it's over discussed, over celebrated, just

[00:26:23] in terms of how many people like it. It's almost like annoying. You know, it's one of those, like, it's like an interstellar kind of thing. Everybody loves it. I have issues with those kinds of movies. And The Godfather. The Godfather, same thing. Don't get me started. But, which great movies, but I liked it when I first saw it. And then I watched it about maybe two months ago, something like that. And I totally loved it. I think everything about it is great. And yeah, I, I have fallen into the hype.

[00:26:53] La La Land. I've gotten La La for sure. Yeah. That is our top 10 lists. And let us know your favorites, your least favorites, what you think of our lists in the comments if you have a way to do that. Well, hey, maybe we'll get to move to La La Land. Yeah. Someday. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Hey, maybe. But I guess that is about it. And as always, rate, review, subscribe. We have some interviews coming up soon.

[00:27:22] So that should be really exciting. So keep an eye out for all that. Follow us on social media and on Letterboxd if you haven't already. And thanks to all those who have recently. Thanks as always for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I'm honored. Yeah. And hope you enjoyed it even half as much. A fourth as much as we did. And we'll see you next time. All right. See you guys.