REVIEW: ‘Wicked’ is a delight for the holiday season

I’ve been anticipating the first part of the film adaptation of “Wicked” for quite some time. I saw it over the holiday weekend. Let’s talk about it. “Wicked Part One,” which came out in theatres Nov. 22, is a film adaptation of the first half of the original Broadway musical of the same name. Written by Winnie Holzman with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, “Wicked” debuted on Broadway in 2003, starring Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba. The musical is an incredibly loose adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 adult novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” which is essentially a fanfiction of 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz.” That movie, which is an adaptation of the original 1902 stage play, is based off the book by L. Frank Baum. The first thing I noticed about the film version of “Wicked” was how colorful and bright everything was, even Elphaba. Oz, of course, is a very colorful place, but this vibrancy translates to everything. The movie is well-lit, and Elphaba isn’t just a green girl dressed in black. Her skin has depth and contour, her eyes are bright, her lips have...