It’s strange that I sometimes prefer a film or a show to be great but not-quite perfect. It leaves some room for the audience to dissect and discuss it at length for the rest of the afternoon/day/month/year/decade/universe. I was always bound to have opinions on Wicked, as it has been an important part of my life since first coming across it (in Glee of all places1!) but the Netflix film Spellbound also fits this mould of “discussable” very well, as does Moana 2. If something isn’t of a certain level of quality though, it won’t warrant the discussion at all. See Smoggie Queens.
Quick update from last week, both Dinosaur and Only Child unfortunately fell off from their early promise, both working hard and failing to give some drama for the final two episodes. I think I wasn’t as invested in the characters as the creators thought I was. If either was allowed to be a sitcom and not a comedy-drama, they would have been far better. More sitcoms please!
I have not continued with The Listeners.
Wicked (cinema release)
Wicked (2024) is the film adaptation of the stage show adaptation of the novel based on the original 1939 film The Wizard of Oz based on the novel (with sequels) by L Frank Baum. Good lord. The novel Wicked was written as an exploration of what it means to be evil, via the character of the Wicked Witch of the West.
As for the Televigion context, I know the soundtrack inside out – it was on an iPod Nano given to me by my Televigion Wife, and filled with musicals and various overblown singer-songwriters, as emotional catharsis for our trip to the other side of the world for six months. Since then most of the songs from Wicked have featured on every “Work Playlist” I’ve created (except Dancing Through Life, but I suggest you keep reading…)
I also read the novel Wicked by Gregory McGuire on that Australia trip, but have never seen the stage show. My Televigion wife learned about Wicked the show from school friends, has seen it in London, performed songs from it during showcases at university and has the mug.
We’re both huge fans of musicals, she’s a classically trained singer and has performed in many shows from school to the Edinburgh Fringe. We even have a collection of notes for our own entry into the best genre2 featuring dastardly Victorian villains, created over a decade ago and languishing in a drawer from where we hope it will return some day.
So, all of this is to say we were very excited and fully invested for our Sunday morning cinema trip. I’ll try to represent my experience of watching it with a list (who doesn’t love a list)3
- From the moment it started there was no skimping on this being a full-blown and unashamed musical. Thank goodness.
- Low quality CGI Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin-Man, Lion and Toto during the opening seemed like a bad omen, but was simply an ignorable mis-step.
- The Wizard and I was incredible, and fully confirmed how brilliant and seemingly effortless Cynthia Erivo is as Elphaba. It’s one of my favourite songs in the show. I cried.
- In contrast, Ariana Grande feels like she is working hard as Glinda. She’s great, but you can feel the effort.
- What is This Feeling? was over-edited and poorly visually told.
- Popular was baggy and needed tightening up.
- Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero might be my favourite performance of anything this year. He4 allowed me to enjoy Dancing Through Life, a track I always skip when listening to the soundtrack in full.
- The animation on Dr Dillamond, the goat professor, was believable and well-handled. The other animals too, except perhaps the flying monkeys.
- Jeff Goldblum as Oz was too Jeff Goldblum. He might be better in Part II, if he channels his Thor performance a little more.
- Two and a half hours did skip by, but there is a looseness to the whole thing that doesn’t need to be there. My hope (which will never come true) is that Part II is 90 minutes long.
- There is nothing to beat Defying Gravity done properly, as it is here, as the end of this film. I think we need a year to recover. Which we’re getting.
We both came out very happy, despite any of these misgivings above. I have purposely written all this before reading endless articles, reviews and hot-takes, which I’ll do for the rest of December probably5. I can’t be objective, but I completely recommend seeing this in the cinema.
Spellbound (Netflix)
As often happens when my four year old daughter sees Netflix loading up, we get a screenshot of an upcoming film and she immediately wants to watch it6. Often it is something Barbie related, but we saw the “poster” for Spellbound and it looked like a princess with some magical creatures, plus a date not too far in the future, a perfect combination. We also often dive in with no research beforehand (other than a quick check of age suitability). This film was actually an easy choice for a poorly afternoon, for which we all know the best tonic – telly time under a Disney blanket on the sofa. Usually cuddled up with myself or my Televigion Wife. Both if available.
This film is about Princess Ellian (played by Rachel Zegler) whose parents have become monsters thanks to a magic spell, and how she and her court deal with that. It turns out (mild very guessable spoilers, albeit for a very new film) that it is their marriage and relationship with their daughter breaking down that has caused them to become monsters.
While we were watching for the first time I was distracted making a stupid image for a social media joke7 , but what I picked up in the background seemed of a good standard8, and my daughter was, well, spellbound.
As I am addicted to doing, I also had a quick read of the cast list and the Wikipedia page. This immediately sounded alarm bells about a troubled production/distribution9, and the Response section also sounded damning. But it just didn’t tie up with what we were experiencing as a family.
Here were our positive thoughts, given the middling to poor reviews I’ve seen elsewhere:-
- Rachel Zegler has an incredible amount of brightness and charm in her performance and singing that it’s worth watching the film for that alone. If it is ever actually released, she has the potential to be an incredible live-action Snow White.
- It has some genuine Alan Menken magic in the songs – I was definitely still singing the opening song while making my toast the next day.
- It has a solid and not overdone theme to explore – the damage a failing relationship has on a child.
- It is set in an interesting fantasy world – the opening scene with the water gates to the castle and the rainbow fields are beautiful.
- It manages two visually interesting and well-paced action set pieces – the escape from the castle with the banners and the shadow sinking sand.
- There are many excellent jokes that made us all laugh, including great visual gags; the Postmaster and his birds, Nathan Lane and Titus Burgess as an oracle double act, all of John Lithgow!
- One of the songs begins as the notes are played by water dripping on the strings of a broken piano. Gorgeous.
- The finale where the main character Ellien sings to her younger self to accept that things will change is quite lovely.
- I got goosebumps for the parents changing back to their human form (proof of my investment in the story).
- My daughter asked to start it again immediately, which is the most glowing review. She watched it three times through over the course of two days.
I do have some issues with it10 but I can’t help but recommend it, as we have enjoyed watching it multiple times and it has remained in our heads.
Moana 2 (cinema release)
Moana is almost as huge a part of our family life as musicals. We met her on our daughter’s third birthday at Disneyworld, we have seen the film countless times and many of those even before our daugher arrived. We also own the Deluxe Edition soundtrack on CD with all of the outtakes and demos of the songs. So Moana 2 is a big deal for us.
As you may have heard, it was originally developed as a series for Disney+, before being reworked into a theatrical release. A lot of the headlines I can’t help but see in every news feed and on social media seem to say it suffers from that transition, but I’m not sure I agree.
We went to the cinema on a Monday afternoon (thank you employer for the Scottish bank holiday that no-one else I know has ever been given) and bought the limited edition drinks cup, with a plastic popcorn bucket thrown in. My daughter was in her Moana dress11 and I was cuddling the ‘already-purchased with birthday money two months ago’ doll of Moana’s younger sister Simea throughout the film. As with Spellbound above, my daughter absolutely loved it, and requested the opening song (“We’re Back”) on constant loop in the car on the drive home. So it certainly passed that bar of entertaining a fully committed child fan.
My impression was one of comfort, rather than inspiration – I was pleased to be back in the company of Moana and Maui, loved that I have more Pacific Island mythology to find out about, and certainly enjoyed the new characters on Moana’s crew. But the story lacked an engaging villain or character motivation for Moana or Maui, other than “the next adventure, that’s a little bit bigger”. The songs, while fun and sung beautifully12, are not quite in the league of the original.
I may have improved opinions on the songs after they are inevitably repeated in my world for the next few months. I’ll keep you posted.
Unless you have exceedingly high expectations, you will not be disappointed seeing this in the cinema.
Smoggie Queens (iPlayer)
It’s another one of these – supposedly a sitcom, but forced into comedy-drama. It has energy and committed performances, but I didn’t laugh once. And the main character is quite unlikeable, on purpose I think. I’ll keep trying whatever BBC Comedy offers me, but this one is a no from me.
Spelling it Out13
The above list is hopefully quite obviously in personal preference order, most enjoyed to least with a huge gulf down to Smoggie Queens. As ever, I welcome all opinions from anyone reading or any particularly relevant or contradicting articles and reviews you’ve come across. And of course, any great but not perfect shows that are ripe for discussion! Thank you for reading.
The Televigion Backlist
I did watch half an hour or so of Territory on Netflix (you may remember it left the list but the recommender got back in touch) – I couldn’t get invested in the soapy family drama and many shots of Australian outback, cows and helicopters, despite a deep love for Anna Torv due to the excellent sci-fi series Fringe. So it doesn’t warrant a write-up, but I did start watching something out of my comfort zone. Go me. Ish.
- LAST CHANCE Deadpool and Wolverine (Disney+)
- STILL HERE Barry (Now/Sky TV)
- STILL HERE Last Man on Earth (Disney+)
- NEW ENTRY A Man on the Inside (Netflix) – A show I assumed was on US network TV as I heard good things on social media, but is actually on Netflix, a new show from Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) starring Ted Danson (it’s Ted Danson).
Footnotes
- The season 1 version from 2009, when I was just beginning to find my own way to performing (comedy and not musical theatre at that point; I didn’t become Quasimodo in a school tour musical pantomime for another 5 years). ↩︎
- Am I joking? I don’t think I am. Direct emotional and emotive storytelling, plus expectatations of pizzazz, glitz and glamour? Anyone who dislikes musicals is scared of honesty. Or just hates show-offs. ↩︎
- There’s another one for Spellbound below, I clearly do. ↩︎
- And the excellent adjustments to the music, the choreography and the amazing rotating sets. ↩︎
- Since drafting this I have read a few articles and this one from Film Crit Hulk captures and expands on all of my thoughts, particularly the failures I noticed being mostly directorial. ↩︎
- On another note, if we turn on the TV and something Maisie likes is on but it is partway through, she’ll ask to see it from the start, as that is what is naturally possibly in this modern world of ours. I enjoyed this long-form article about the nature of TV for children – Kids TV is Dead, Long Live Kids TV ↩︎
Said silly Bluesky post ↩︎- My low point of children’s animation was seeing Migration in the cinema; it has absolutely nothing to recommend it and the most muddled of stories with a bunch of conflicting points it failed to make. We only made it through the whole film due to a sense of duty to the price of a cinema ticket and the popcorn we had purchased. My daughter couldn’t point to a single moment she remembered or enjoyed as we left and had our customary discussion. ↩︎
- This Collider Interview with the director Vicky Jenson gives a little more insight into the long process, if you can ignore a LOT of ads (or have an ad-blocker) ↩︎
- Nicole Kidman seems miscast as the Queen, not only for her voice not suiting the character design but also a pretty bland and uninteresting performance. And John Lasseter’s involvement in anything is still troubling. ↩︎
- Not the costume, the themed dress, just so you have a clear picture. ↩︎
- The voice work, both spoken and sung, by Auli’i Cravalho as Moana has the same undeniable charisma and spark as I mentioned about Rachel Zegler above. Magical. ↩︎
- So, the Outro puns have continued, for now. ↩︎
Televigion 