Wicked: For Good dissolves into a messy puddle of baffling creative decisions that will leave you frustrated rather than elated.

Spoilers ahead for a movie based on a 22-year-old stage musical that most people know already.

Hoo boy, that was rough.

Wicked: Part I was a rollicking good time, despite being littered with flaws. What’s with the lighting? Why does everything look so fake? Why did you cast Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum, both of whom are better at holding poses than tunes?

As Part I ends on that soaring cinematic (and overly CGI-smothered) rendition of ‘Defying Gravity’, the big question was how Wicked: For Good would tie up all these established narrative threads.

Very poorly, as it turns out.

Five hours across two movies is a lot of time to spend on a two-and-a-half-hour stage musical, especially if said musical’s story amounts to little more than a glorified Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-esque retread of The Wizard of Oz and most of the good stuff is in act one. But this is Hollywood we’re talking about, and history has shown that if there’s even a whiff of getting two movies for the price of one, it’ll jump at the chance.

Act Two of the Wicked stage musical is generally considered the weaker of the acts, which isn’t a good starting place for a movie adaptation. As if there was a fear of not having enough interesting material to do For Good justice, director Jon M. Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox inexplicably shoehorn the entire plot of The Wizard of Oz in.

The end result? A horrendous Frankenstein’s monster of shoddy world-building, an utter disservice to all the thematic weight and characterisation established in Part I, and brain-numbing plotting that left me wondering “WTF is going on here” several times.

We’re thrown back into Oz several years after Part I and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is reintroduced as the evil Wicked Witch of the West with an action set piece that could’ve been taken from a Marvel superhero movie, both visually and tonally (not a compliment). The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has gone full fascist while Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) helps him pull the strings with no explanation as to what her motives are; Glinda (Ariana Grande) is now beloved by the masses as a paragon of good, but is still oblivious to what the Wizard and Madame Morrible are doing; Nessa (Marissa Bode), Elphaba’s sister, is now the fascistic ruler of Oz’s Munchkins, and still harbours an unrequited love for Boq (Ethan Slater); and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) is kind of just there, looking hot.

With so much plot to speed through, the script buckles under the weight of it all. This is not helped by Chu’s focus on establishing a ‘Wizard of Oz cinematic universe’ of sorts. Characters who seemed to have some common sense in Part I regress into irrational caricatures who do and/or say the dumbest things possible just to keep the storylines moving; all the thematic work about oppression and acceptance established in Part I is touched upon, but without any nuance; and the world-building makes absolutely no sense and crumbles with just the slightest bit of scrutiny.

This is best encapsulated when Elphaba meets with Nessa for the first time in years. In just a few minutes, Nessa goes from scorned sister to giddy teenager to toxic jealousy personified. Dorothy’s red shoes are given a tacked-on origin story as a peace offering of sorts from Elphaba to Nessa, and Boq gets turned into the Tin Man after Nessa’s attempt to use a love spell from Elphaba’s Grimmerie backfires. As Nessa flip-flops between “I need your help now” and “you need to leave” to Elphaba, and “You will be miiiiine!” and “I didn’t do anything!!” while Boq writhes in pain from the fumbled love spell, I’m just gobsmacked at how unlikeable this character has become in just minutes, almost all of which stems from the poor screenwriting.

For Good also neuters itself by having its main characters cordoned off from each other, effectively robbing us of what worked so well in Part I. Seeing Elphaba and Glinda moping around by themselves doesn’t make for fun watching, and it somehow gets even worse when the script completely undermines their whole bond by making Fiyero the main source of tension between the pair by having them compete for his affections.

Rather than have Elphaba and Glinda clash on ideological terms – hell, the movie could’ve done exactly that by having the tension be focused on disagreements about how the Wizard runs things – but having the pair lose it over some dimwitted himbo does both characters a great disservice, especially after all the work that’s been done to show that the two care deeply for each other, certainly deeper than Fiyero.

It’s a credit to Erivo and Grande, who do what they can with a lacklustre script. Both actresses are at the top of their respective games, especially in the singing sequences, and manage to elevate the ‘For Good’ sequence into something that’s genuinely spine-tingling. It’s just a shame that we don’t get to see the pair together onscreen that much over the course of For Good’s 137-minute runtime.

But even this talented pair can’t save the wet squib of an ending where Elphaba tells Glinda that one of them has to be evil so the other can be a symbol of good for the people. Look, I get that sentiment and it would’ve (kind of) worked if the symbol of good wasn’t a white princess who is put on a pedestal while the evil one is a green-skinned person representing all the minorities out there. What kind of cynical message is For Good trying to tell us with that?

Ultimately, I was let down by the utter lack of fun to be had in For Good from start to finish. Part I had the right balance of camp and whimsy, combined with lively choreography. There’s almost none of that to be found in this movie. Songs like ‘For Good’ and ‘No Good Deed’ should’ve been showstoppers, but are drowned out by a sea of drab CGI slop. If I wanted dull CGI slop, I’d go watch a Marvel movie.

There was plenty of potential within the Oz universe for Wicked: For Good to be something interesting beyond just following the yellow brick road like a lemming. It’s just disappointing that this movie ends up being a slave to the stage musical’s failings while being stuffed with Wizard of Oz references like fan service-y Easter eggs. Jon M. Chu may have defied gravity in Part I, but this movie crashes back down to earth in an unceremonious and dull way.