★★★

A year on, it feels legitimate to consider Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: Part One a barnstorming success. Not content with defying gravity at the box office, the film proved popular through the awards season and spawned the cultural moment that was Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s space-held press tour. Part two, subtitled For Good, dances through on a slightly tougher sell. It’s the stage musical’s less beloved second half, complete with notoriously weaker songs and haphazard attempt to crowbar the original Baum circle into Macguire’s square.

★★★

There’s little in Wicked, Jon M. Chu’s unjustifiably long adaptation of the eponymous musical’s first act, likely to convert the unconverted. It’s a fitfully spellbinding affair but not quite transformationally bewitching. Those who love Wicked, will embrace the film in kind. It boasts excellent performances, extravagant set pieces and frankly extraordinary attention to detail. Those who do not, take heed: in spite of a runtime almost as long as the entire Broadway show, intermission included, Chu’s Wicked only manages to reach the show’s infamous half-time banger, “Defying Gravity”, by the roll of its credits. Part Two is twelve months from release. It’s a Jacksonian split either agonising or frustrating, dependent on personal inclination. Both, really.