Jon M. Chu – Memphis Flyer

Antiheroes are everywhere these days. The concept of the hero who exemplifies the virtues of the society that produced them dates to the dawn of storytelling. Achilles was a strong and brave Greek hoplite whose toxic vanity was part of the package. Red Horn was a model Mississippian sportsman who challenged giants of the underworld to a game of tchung-kee. Luke Skywalker was a farm boy turned fighter pilot who learned to master his emotions and fight for the greater good.

The antihero, on the other hand, never embodies their society’s virtues, but instead exposes its vices. In Homer’s Iliad, Thersites, the “ugliest man who came to Troy,” calls out Agamemnon’s vainglory and gets beaten to death for his troubles. Don Quixote turns the virtues of the Medieval knight on their heads, changing steadfastness into stubbornness, faith into delusion. If America had universal healthcare, high school chemistry teacher Walter White would never have started cooking meth to pay for cancer treatment.

One way writers pull off this trick is to retell a story from the villain’s point of view. John Gardner made Beowulf’s enemy into a hero of society’s outcasts in Grendel. In 1995, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked did it with The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West. Maguire gave L. Frank Baum’s antagonist a name, Elphaba, and framed her alleged wickedness as political propaganda. After all, isn’t the fake wizard lording over the land of Oz the real villain of the story?

Wicked became a Tony-winning Broadway musical in 2003 and has been running constantly ever since. In retrospect, it’s baffling that a film adaptation took so long. After years in development hell, director Jon M. Chu has finally created a worthy big-screen version.

One element common to antiheroes is that their ambitions are always doomed to failure. We hear of Elphaba before we meet her. She’s already been killed by Dorothy Gale, and the Munchkins are celebrating with a song, “No One Mourns the Wicked.” But for Glinda the Good Witch of the North (Ariana Grande), the celebration is muted. She knew Elphaba from back in the day, when they were roommates at Shiz University. Glinda, who was then Galinda, was the child of privilege studying sorcery for prestige. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was a wild magic talent who almost didn’t get admitted to the prestigious university at all. She was only there to help her wheelchair-bound younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) when an accidental display of her magic powers brought her to the attention of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Elphaba and Galinda become the best of frenemies. Elphaba’s green skin marks her as a permanent outsider, and she carries a big chip on her shoulder. Galinda is the apex mean girl, complete with an entourage of sniveling sycophants (Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James, perfectly despicable). Yet both sympathize with, and kind of envy, the other. They compete for the attention of Madame Morrible, but when she’s summoned to see The Wizard, a sublime Jeff Goldblum, Elphaba insists on taking Galinda with her. In this telling, the Wizard is a tyrant, bent on removing Oz’s talking animals from society. Elphaba’s selfish wish was for the Wizard to change her green skin to a more socially acceptable color, but instead she decides to petition Oz the great and powerful on behalf of the oppressed animals.

Wicked cannot be faulted for its craftsmanship. Chu’s crew has created an Oz that feels vibrant and alive, from Elphaba’s swirly glasses to the Wizard’s massive clockwork train. Erivo is flawless as the long-suffering outsider whose glimpse into the inner workings of the elite radicalizes her to drastic action. Likewise, Grande lends depth to the Good Witch while belting out the Broadway bangers.

Wicked’s biggest problem is that it’s Hobbit-tized. At 180 minutes, it’s longer than the stage show, but it only tells half the story. Showstopper “Defying Gravity” still leads into the intermission, but in this case, the intermission is going to be a year long. None of the new material feels necessary, but with Erivo and Grande leaving it all on the screen, you probably won’t mind.

Wicked
Now playing
Multiple locations

One of the most stinging political critiques of the United States ever penned came from a musical. In the the 1950s, the decade now lionized as our golden age, the country was fresh off saving the world from fascism in World War II, and desperately high on its own propaganda supply. Along comes West Side Story, the 1957 Broadway adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, set in the Hispanic immigrant quarter of New York City, where teenage race gangs challenged the idea of the melting pot. In a time when racism and discrimination was studiously avoided in pop culture, “America” laid out the county’s stark dichotomies of poverty and prosperity, and set it to a jaunty beat. Presented as a dialog between optimistic women and pessimistic men of Manhattan’s Puerto Rican immigrant community, every one of Stephen Sondheim’s couplets cut to the bone. “Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes.” “I’ll get a terrace apartment/Better get rid of your accent.” “Life is all right in America/If you’re all white in America.”

The West Side Story generation is represented in In The Heights by Abuela (Olga Merediz), the kindly grandmother who immigrated to America in the 1940s. She tells the story of what happened to the Anitas and Bernardos of the world with “Paciencia Y Fe,” just one of the show-stoppers in this fantastic musical.

The first draft of In the Heights was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda in 1999, when he was a sophomore at Wesleyan University. In 2008, the future Hamilton made his Broadway debut playing Usnavi De La Vega, the owner of a corner bodega in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the long-awaited film adaptation, Usnavi is played by Anthony Ramos, and Miranda is demoted to the role of Piraguero, a shaved ice vendor who witnesses the gentrification of the historic immigrant neighborhood.

Usnavi is proud of his bodega, and the community it nourishes, but he longs to return to the Dominican Republic and reopen the beachside bar his late father left to bring them to America. But his plans for the future are complicated by his crush on Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who works in the corner nail salon run by Daniela (Daphne Rubin-Vega). Meanwhile, Nina Rosario (Leslie Grace), is returning to the neighborhood where she grew up after her freshman year at Stanford. Nina’s father Kevin Rosario (Jimmy Smits), a self-made man who owns a car service, has sacrificed much to send her to the expensive university. Nina, feeling guilty about the burden she had put on her family, has decided to drop out. Her movement between worlds is symbolized by her return to the salon, where she trades straight hair for curly, like the other neighborhood girls.

The subject of In The Heights, gentrification pushing out the natives of a long-ignored neighborhood in favor of higher-income, mostly white newcomers, turned out to be the defining fact of twenty-first century urban life. Daniela’s nail salon is being forced to move to The Bronx, and the private equity vultures are circling the Rosario’s business. In 2021, what was a New York-centric driver of conflict when Miranda picked up his pen is now relatable content in communities all over the country. Miranda’s distinctive, rapid-fire, rap-sing style of lyrical delivery made famous by Hamilton apparently emerged fully formed when he was but a wee polymath. But the sprawling ensemble and intertwining micro-narratives of In The Heights lack Hamilton’s focus and deep characterization.

One of *In The Heights* massive dance numbers filmed on the streets of New York City.

While you’re in the hands of director Jon M. Chu, you’re not going to care about that very much. Chu comes out guns blazing with an epic dance sequence set to the overture, introducing the setting and characters while choreographing literally hundreds of hoofers through the real streets of New York City. “96,000” goes full Busby Berkley with a reported 500 dancers pulling shapes in an actual public pool. The film’s most gleeful show stopper is “No Me Diga,” an ensemble number set in the nail salon, featuring dancing wig heads.

Just as in Robert Wise’s 1961 West Side Story film adaptation, the leads are outshone by the supporting actors. Ramos and Barrera are great as the narrator and the object of his desire, but Grace’s deeply conflicted Nina commands the screen, and Smits (who even does some singing) is simply magnificent as the aging patriarch struggling to provide a better life for her.

In The Heights joins Moulin Rouge, Chicago, La La Land, and Rocketman on the list of great 21st century film musicals. If you’ve been waiting for something awesome to draw you back to the movie theater after a painful pandemic pause, this is the one.

In The Heights is now playing in theaters at multiple locations, and streaming on HBO Max.