REVIEWS. WICKED: FOR GOOD & RENTAL FAMILY are loaded with sentimentality, but only one defies emotional gravity.

Ariana Grande (L) and Cynthia Erivo (R) in Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good

Wicked

Director: Jon M. Chu

Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Michele Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum

Remember the sequence in 1939's The Wizard of Oz, the one where Dorothy's house, seemingly swept up by a midwest tornado, lands in Munchkinland, falling on the Wicked Witch of the East in the process? All that's left of her are the ruby shoes and a pair of striped red socks. Anyway, the house lands with a thud, and that's kind of how I felt about Wicked: For Good, Jon M. Chu's year-long awaited finale to last year's Wicked (Act One, if you've seen the Broadway production). It's kind of a clunker.

The musical's second act, long considered its weakest part, needed some serious fine tuning to raise it to the musical and emotional level of Act One and to justify a separate film. What we get are two new undistinguished songs ("No Place Like Home" and "Girl in the Bubble"), one each for co-stars Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda). In addition, each sequence feels unnecessarily long and drawn out with lots of superfluous special effects. I'd be surprised if anything was left on the cutting room (re: editing) floor.

Oh, and - in case you haven't noticed - there has been LOTS of marketing for Wicked: For Good. In anticipation of the audience's need to buy something - anything - connected to the movie, Universal Studios and all its various distributors launched a monstrous marketing campaign months ago. I first saw the trailer for Wicked: For Good earlier this summer. Since then everything from Glinda/Elphaba Barbie dolls to Dunkin' Donuts Wicked-inspired menu that includes the Wicked Green Matcha, Wicked Pink Refresher, and Wicked "Munchkins," each designed "to reflect the vibrant spirit of Oz," have popped up across various media outlets in print and online.

The NBC store, a subsidiary of Universal, is selling everything from Wicked clothing to mugs, backpacks, dolls and wine glasses. The restaurant Bonefish Grill is currently offering "Wicked" cocktails: the Ozmopolitan, a rum/cranberry juice/mango concoction that comes complete with a "pink glow," and the Oz Elixir, a green apple/pineapple/rum blend swirled with green glitter and topped with a broomstick. I'll take my martini straight up, shaken not stirred, just like 007, and no glitter, thanks.

Erivo and Grande have dominated entertainment news and talk shows for weeks, with every possible designer outfit, premiere and Red Carpet moment documented on X, Instagram and YouTube. Earlier this month, People Magazine named co-star Jonathan Bailey (Fyiero) as this year's "Sexiest Man Alive." Could all of the hoopla leading up to this week's theater launch be any more obvious? To make matters even more interesting (or silly), almost every movie resource, from Variety to IndieWire, has already picked Wicked: For Good as an Oscar frontrunner.

With all this hype, the movie's finale needs to deliver big time. It does not.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely adore a good musical. I was raised on them. Some of the earliest songs I learned on the organ/piano were Broadway show tunes. Many of my fondest childhood memories involve going to the movies with my parents and aunt Helen, usually to a musical. I still remember taking the Cleveland-Lorain Highway Coach into downtown Cleveland with my mom to see Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. My dad would meet us after the show, and we'd go out to dinner. I also recall a cold winter night when we went to see My Fair Lady at the Palace Theater in downtown Lorain. By the time the movie ended, it had snowed outside, and I can still see my shoe prints (I had a brand new pair of Buster Brown penny loafers) in the snow as I walked with my dad to get the car.

That love of musicals deepened as a teenager, when Jesus Christ Superstar challenged my notion of what musicals could be. I loved its suggested irreverence, the way it challenged traditional depictions of Jesus, Mary, and the Apostles, especially Judas. And I loved the music. I knew every word to every song and took a certain subversive delight weaving the melodies into the songs I was playing at Mass.

And then there was the phenomenon of Andrew Lloyd Webber. After Superstar, his succession of hits - from Evita to Phantom of the Opera transformed and reimagined Broadway musicals, paving the way for other, more innovative shows, including Les Miserables, Jersey Boys, and Hamilton. If you're seeing a theme here, I admit I tend to gravitate (pun intended) to shows with non-traditional stories, great songs, and innovative sets and production design. I love being transported to another place and time through music and dance.

I read Gregory McGuire's 1995 novel on which Wicked: The Musical was originally based, and marveled at that way he created an intriguing, philosohical backstory for The Wizard of Oz's witches, examining broader themes of good and evil in the process, and giving substance and gravitas (oops, I did it again) to the characters I'd met as a kid watching The Wizard of Oz and later, as a teacher and professor, integrating scholarly research into the mix by showing how L. Frank Baum's children's book might actually have been a metaphor for the late 19th century populist movement.

As I wrote last year in my review of Wicked, my first experience with the music occurred via a Broadway touring company in Chicago in the early 2000s. Though I'd heard mostly good things about the musical from friends and former students, I found myself underwhelmed with the production. Yes, there were interesting sets and stunning choreography, but the songs left me flat, and the core relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, never quite resonated with me - a huge disappointment, given that's exactly the kind of story I would love: celebrating a female "bromance," so to speak, defying conventional notions about what it means to be strong, capable and female. In those respects, Wicked failed (me) miserably.

The first movie left me similarly disappointed, as the story seemed even more watered down than the stage version, using special effects to substitute for substance. I rewatched Wicked again this week, prior to subjecting myself to For Good, and the flaws I mentioned a year ago (over-the-top sets, spectacularly long musical sequences paired with equally tedious librettos, diluted musical arrangements). If you wait around long enough for Erivo's signature riff at the end of "Defying Gravity," you may find that the special effects actually detract from the power of her delivery. How many times can she spin around amidst a flurry of even more CGI images? Too many, for me.

I also wondered about the decision to turn the musical into two movies, given the lightweight second half, as is seemed (at the time) like an egregious money grab, given the musical's devoted fan base. After seeing the finale, I can only conclude that Mr. Chu & Company would have been better off learning how to edit his many fabulous visual stunts into one really good, tightly woven story. The power of Stephen Schwartz's mediocre melodies would have benefitted from cleaner musical arrangements that provide the emotional foundation of Elphaba and Glinda's friendship. Sorry to report Schwartz peaked musically in 1972 with Pippin and only made slightly strong comeback in 1999 with Disney's animated Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Cutting Wicked the musical in half to make two stand-alone movies only makes the flaws in both parts stand out in exactly the way you don't want them to, diminishing the strength of the story and McGuire's original ruminations on how/why we choose goodness or its darker counterpart. Overall, it is long and slow.

Though Erivo would seem to have the meatier part (it's really Elphaba's story, after all), For Good seems to place more focus on Grande's Glinda, consequently downplaying the evil aspects of Elphaba's personal evolution. Erivo and Grande were nominated for Oscars last year, (Erivo for Actress; Grande in a supporting role), and early predictions have both nominated again. Both halves of the movie were filmed at the same time. Given Elphaba's journey to the dark side in Part Two, critics anticipated Erivo would be a stronger Oscar contender this year for Best Actress. But 2025 has already produced numerous, equally dark, better reviewed films with strong female leads, including Jessie Buckley in the forthcoming Hamnet, Julia Roberts in After the Hunt, Jennifer Lawrence in Die, My Love, Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee and newcomer Chase Infiniti in One Battle After Another.

Let's just say Wicked: For Good may not enhance Erivo's Oscar chances. Cynthia Erivo is a force and a presence, but the material for her is thin here. Grande fares a bit better and almost eclipses Erivo's screen time, but that raises other questions about images of women of color in movies. Placing Grande's petite blonde in more of a spotlight role than Erivo's more ostensibly flawed character (the illegitimate biracial offspring of her mother's affair with Oz's ultimate charlatan, the Wizard, whose moral convictions deny her the opportunity to be seen for the good person she really is), sends arguably unintended messages about consequences for women, race, and social acceptability. Both women give solid performances despite the chaos swirling about them, but it's still difficult to win an Oscar for a great performance in a mediocre film, and popularity alone (early Box Office returns were around $68M) doesn't always yield an Oscar.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Pre-release reviews have been mixed. The New Yorker's Justin Chang commented that the Wicked franchised is "so cowed by its predecessor" (1939's The Wizard of Oz) that "instead of building authentically, it reacts with destructiveness — almost a petulant attempt to outdo what came before."* Donald Clarke of The Irish Times was harsher, saying that "if you bought the first film's brash visual aesthetic – the result of a giant toddler vomiting candyfloss all over Walt Disney World, then you will be relieved to discover it has got no less stomach-unsettling."**

'Nuff said. You get the idea. I was mostly bored by the prequel's finale, but if you are a diehard Wicked fan, you've probably already seen it twice. If so, go forth and gravitate. But, two months from now, please don't ask me why Cynthia Erivo isn't the odd-on favorite to win an Oscar. There are more films out there that are way better or, if you're Universal Studios, plenty of time to make more money on this flailing second half. I'm predicting "up to 80% off sales" on Wicked souvenirs before Christmas.

*******

Wicked: For Good is currently playing in theaters everywhere from sunrise to midnight. It is rated PG for excessive Munchkin violence and depicting animals as more intelligent than humans. Clocking in at 2 hours, 17 minutes, Part Two is only 23 minutes shorter than Part One. If you plan to see both together, as some theaters are offering, you will be committing to 5 hours of your life (5 and 1/2 if you visit an AMC Theater). The original Wizard of Oz ran 101 minutes (or 1 hour, 41 minutes), and the Broadway musical ran 2 hours, 45 minutes, including a 15-minute information. Just sayin'.

So why does this two-parter run twice as long as the production it's based on?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Wicked: For Good does not yet have a streaming release date yet, but expect one fairly soon, just like its predecessor. Then you can hunker down on a cold winter's night and watch both... or wait for the inevitable "sing-a-long" version that will likely infiltrate movie theaters before too long.

On to something better....

From left, Takehiro Hira, Akira Emoto, Brendan Frasier, Shannon Mahina Gorman, and Mari Yamamoto in Rental Family.

Rental Family

Director: Hikari

Starring: Brendan Frasier, Akira Emoto, Mari Yamamoto

"Sometimes you just need someone to look you in the eye to remind you you exist."

The opening sequence to Hikari's sweetly endearing Rental Family looked like something straight out of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2002): we are immediately drawn into the crowded, claustrophobic fast-paced world that is Tokyo, with the camera speeding up, blurring faces so to emphasize just how hurried the environment, and how insignificant the individual swept up its chaos. Perhaps, the NYTimes film critic Jeannette Catsoulis (or the copy editor) noticed the same similarity, as the Times's review of Rental Family was titled "Lost in Impersonation."

The similarity stops there: Hikari's story of a lonely American actor named Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Frasier) living and working in Tokyo, who finds himself out of his element in more ways than one when he accepts an offer to "fulfill" people's wishes, lacks the substantive personal conflict and cultural alientation of Coppola's Oscar-winning film (for Best Original Screenplay), the offbeat tale of a has-been American actor (Bill Murray) who falls in love with a much younger woman (Scarlett Johansson).

Rental Family has multiple opportunities to explore a variety of key themes: from aging and racism to managing loneliness and protecting professional boundaries, yet Hakiri and co-writer Stephen Blahut opt not to linger on the deeper moral and philosophical questions implicit in their script. Instead, we get a series of sometimes clichéd vignettes in which the bemused Phillip (Frasier's face is especially suited to this emotion) struggles to balance his reverence for Japanese culture with his need to impose American values on their behavior.

He forms emotional attachments with his two most important clients: an aging Japanese actor named Kikuo who is battling dementia (the wonderful Akira Emoto) and a biracial preteen named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman) who is in need of a father figure. Kikuo's daughter (Sei Matobu) enlists Phillip to play the role of a journalist interested in interviewing her father about his illustrious career. Mia's mother (Shino Shinozaki) needs a "father" in order for Mia to gain acceptance into a prestigious private school.

You can see what's going to happen from a mile away: Phillip spends much of his evening hours alone in a tiny apartment longingly observing his neighbors in nearby apartments going about their routines as couples and families. Despite sweet, intermittent encounters with a delightful prostitute, Phillip navigates by himself, and we can only anticipate that working in an environment that requires him to feign compassion for people in need, will only result in his own heartbreak. Helping Kikuo and Mia, Phillip inevitably finds himself drawn to their respective plights, which, in turn, compromises his professionalism as well as his judgment.

Unfortunately, the movie never fully develops the moral dilemma that emerges when Phillip begins to believe his alternate reality. Since rental families are common in Japan and have been available to help people "make connections" for over thirty years, we need more information about Phillip's own emotional needs and the almost unhealthy attachments he develops with his clients. Without that context or a more probing examination of Japanese acceptance of the "rental" practice, the resulting storyline becomes borderline sappy, although Hakiri exhibits great restraint pulling back those scenes that threaten to venture toward the overly sentimental so that we are left with a kind of understated charm that allows the narrative to unfold gently.

What I'll remember most from this movie, besides Frasier's expressive face, is the sequence where Phillip conspires with Kikuo to take the old man back to his childhood home. In what Kikuo refers to as his "jailbreak" (perhaps, a broader commentary about the restrictive Japanese cultural mores that confine his spirit), the two travel back to Kikuo's home (in what appeared to be Sado, an island to the northwest of Tokyo) where we learn of the secret Kikuo has carried with him for over a half-century. I won't reveal it here, but Emoto's quiet poignancy in telling his story is the most authentic part of the film. I wish there had been more of this kind of spiritual exploration.

Another noteworthy performance comes from Mari Yamamoto, as Aiko, an employee of the rental agency Phillip works for, and who primarily provides "apologies" for unfaithful Japanese husbands unable to confess their indiscretion to their wives. She poses as the "mistress" and offers each wife an apology (re: excuse) for their errant spouse. It is a subplot that, for me, merited further examination, as it cuts deeply into Japanese culture, specifically, the notion of lying to avoid social embarrassment: the lengths people go to avoid admitting error, and the willingness of the agrieved party to accept the lie in place of honest communication. When Mia, who has figured out that Phillip isn't her father, asks him - "Why do adult always lie?" - his response is as smooth as the movie's veneer: "Because it's easier."

That Phillip, at first an observer to this cultural practice (i.e., the rental family), then a reluctant and finally an engaged participant in it, is presented awkwardly, sometimes judgmentally, as Phillip begins to see himself as someone who can "fix" his clients' problems. That's where the movie falters most, in its inability to delve deeper into cultural differences, human behavior, and the consequences of deception. At times, Phillip seems to impose his American (re: Western) values on the culture he so desperately reveres, as though he wants to "fix" that, too.

Earlier this week, I watched an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with the actress Kate Winslet. She was remembering the years she'd lived in the United States and had become fond of Thanksgiving, except for one thing: she couldn't understand the idea of the sweet potato casserole. You know, the one with marshmallows on top. In Winslet's mind, sweet potatoes were more of a savory dish, so the juxtaposition of the sweet, gooey marshmallows seemed incongruent to her taste.

Kind of like Rental Family. In a movie that raises serious issues about family, culture, aging and loneliness, writer/director Hakiri offers a substantive base for its narrative, only to cover the content with a frothy topping of glib, feel-good resolutions. And, while the movie is utterly charming throughout, including an exquisite score by Jónsi, breathtaking cinematography from Takurô Ishizaka, and an affecting performance by Emoto, Rental Family is ultimately unsatisfying in its depiction of how genuine human connection is what we all truly crave to validate our existence.

The final shot in the movie suggests that idea, but it comes far too late, despite the touching moments that punctuate Phillip's emotional journey. Even with these shortcomings, though, I still enjoyed Rental Family, especially its willingness to tackle complex themes about cultural differences. As always, I'd rather see a filmmaker attempt a tricky topic and fall short than watch inflated material with ubiquitous special effects and overextended sequences for the sheer spectacle of it.

*******

Rental Family is currently playing in theaters and is rated PG-13 for scenes of mild violence and intensity. It is in English and Japanese with corresponding subtitles. Though no streaming date has been set, the movie will likely premiere on Hulu/Disney+ sometime in early 2026.

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Sources for Wicked: For Good:

*Justin Chang, "Wicked: For Good" is Very, Very Bad," The New Yorker: November 20, 2025.

**Donald Clarke, "Wicked: For Good Review: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Almost Save This Deflated Pre-quel," The Irish Times: November 18, 2025.