For all its song-and-dance spectacle, ‘Wicked’ sequel lacks heart

“Give us a clock tick” is an expression uttered several times in “Wicked: For Good.” But Jon M. Chu’s two-part musical has asked for quite a bit more than that.

The two halves of this “Wicked” adaptation have run 297 minutes, which, more than the threat of lions and tigers and bears, is enough to make any moviegoer — except perhaps those entirely bewitched by the “Wizard of Oz” revision — breathe a sigh of “Oh, my.”

So it’s a lot of clock ticks, quite a few more than the stage musical, which had roughly half the run time. But “Wicked” has always been a spectacle of scale: power ballads and sprawling sets, all in retina-testing technicolor. Muchness is part of the point of “Wicked,” a song-and-dance assault of allegory and anthems relayed with an earnestness that you might call endearing if you’re good or tiresome or if you’re, well, you know.

For anyone in the former camp who somehow felt last year’s part one wasn’t enough, “For Good” will probably be a welcome second helping. Since these films were shot at the same time, much of the tone and tenor of the first chapter continues in “For Good.” There’s more Cynthia Erivo, more Ariana Grande and more soaring soliloquies. For most “Wicked” fans, more is good.

But for the rest of us, “For Good” doesn’t offer much relief. There is, to be sure, great talent on display in these films, particularly in the case of Erivo. But “For Good,” like its predecessor, often feels more like a Production than a movie, with characters shuffled on and offstage with Oz-like orchestration.

That may be an unavoidable aspect of a pop amalgamation like “Wicked.” This is a big-screen adaptation of a 2003 stage musical (Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz) based on a 1995 book (Gregory Maguire) inspired by a 1939 movie (Victor Fleming and company) and the original 1900 “The Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. More than a century of American entertainment is packed inside “Wicked.”

The catchiest tunes (“Popular,” Defying Gravity”) are in the rearview, though. Instead, “Wicked: For Good” is all storm clouds and rebellion, as Elphaba mounts a resistance to the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Characters like Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), captain of the Wizard’s guard, are forced to pick a side.

Considering the source material of the 1939 classic — old Hollywood at the very height of its powers — you would think Oz would come through clearly as a setting, only seen from a different perspective. But “Wicked: For Good” struggles to really orient us in a place. When Dorothy and Toto drop in (they’re seen only from afar), you almost yearn for the clear pathway they begin skipping down.

Instead, “Wicked: For Good,” rather than conjuring Oz anew, always feels like it’s jumping from one set piece to another. Maybe this is a silly gripe for a fantasyland. But I rarely found myself lifted into a movie world, but rather sat watching it — sometimes with admiration, rarely with delight — from the mezzanine. The rub of going for maximum effect all the time is that the actors never have a chance to simply be.

All the momentum that “Wicked: For Good” does gather is owed significantly to its stars. To a large degree, these movies have been the Erivo and Grande show, a grand spectacle of female friendship that rises above all the petty biases and misjudgments to forge a vision of harmony in opposites.

Grande is best at the (too few) comic moments. But it’s Erivo who really elevates the material. Her Elphaba seems both to believe in the hopeful possibility of “Wicked” and to fear its impossibility. With her melancholy delivery of one of the new songs, “No Place Like Home,” Erivo appears to grasp that it’s going to take more than a click of the heels, or tick of the clock, to get there.