Wicked and Gladiator II Reviews and Riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Disneyland
Plus, quick thoughts on Back to the Future: The Musical.
Happy Wickiator weekend or Gladed weekend or whatever we’re calling the simultaneous arrival of Wicked and Gladiator II in theaters. I recently reviewed both films and it was an interesting situation where these two movies are both arriving with very passionate fans of source material I’m familiar with yet not immersed in.
I saw the stage version of Wicked once when the touring production made one of its many Los Angeles stops, but that was probably 12-14 years ago. I remember enjoying it quite a bit but other details are a bit hazy. As for Gladiator, I always thought the Academy Award-winning movie from 2000 was very well made and well acted and also a bit dull. Cinephile blasphemy for some, I know, I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t super into Gladiator and hadn’t seen it in 20 years or so until I rewatched it before Gladiator II.
Ultimately, I ended up liking both Wicked (the movie that is) and Gladiator II, even as I’m well aware there are many super fans who are absolutely jubilant about Wicked or extremely skeptical of Gladiator II. I can’t quite put myself in the mindset of either, since those aren’t among my core fanbases, but as someone who is incredibly invested in plenty of other pieces of fiction, I appreciate the passion these fans have - well, except when someone yells at me on the internet for having a different opinion, but that goes with the territory.
You can check out my reviews below.
WICKED:
GLADIATOR II:
Going Down the Bayou
I’ve been doing some work for Laughing Place and attended the media event at Disneyland for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and various new holiday offerings last week. Having tried and failed to ride Tiana when I was in Orlando at Walt Disney World in late August, because it was down for the day, I was very happy to finally experience it - and to enjoy it quite a bit! I think it’s a really fun and creative re-theme of Splash Mountain, with some great animatronic figures and some clever visuals throughout.
I was warned over and over again how wet you can get on it from people who’d been on it already - especially your feet. I took every precaution (removed my socks, held my feet up on every drop) but actually didn’t get that wet on the three times I went on the ride. But so many people told me about similar experiences I may have just been very lucky, so if you’re going on it, be like Scar and be prepared (yes, I know that’s a totally different Disney movie, but hey, the Splash Mountain attraction layout is getting built as a Lion King ride at Disneyland Paris, so I say it works!)
I just hope the Anaheim version of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure isn’t as plagued with ongoing tech issues at the Orlando one has been, which was the reason I wasn’t able to ride the Walt Disney World version the day I was at the Magic Kingdom. Even on the media day, the Disneyland version ended up going down for quite awhile, delaying my initial ride. But look, new theme park attractions are often dealing with issues when they first debut so fingers crossed it can be worked out — most of the time, because it will never be all of the time given how complex these rides are — in the near future.
This is Heavy
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure wasn’t the only piece of entertainment I got to finally experience this past week after trying and failing to do so during visits to other states. A year ago, my wife Trish and I took an east coast road trip and attempted to see Back to the Future: The Musical while in New York on Broadway, only to discover they didn’t do shows on the one night of the week we were in Manhattan.
We finally made up for that by going to see the show during its current run at LA’s Pantages Theater - the same place we saw the stage production of Wicked once upon a time. As a huge Back to the Future fan, this show was a must see, and it very much met my expectations. Which is to say, as a musical, it’s just okay, since only a couple of the original songs make much of an impression. But as spectacle and entertainment, it really delivers, with a fun and lively cast, some fantastic visuals, and very impressive on stage special effects involving a time traveling DeLorean and other BTTF mainstays.
The fact that the last few songs of the show are not the originals but the ones most associated with the movie — “Earth Angel,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “The Power of Love” and “Back in Time” — is also a shrewd move, since those songs are all great, obviously, and conclude Back to the Future: The Musical on a high note.
Ready for Freddy
I mentioned this already in my look at A Nightmare on Elm Street’s 40th anniversary, but once more I’ll note that on the We Enjoy… podcast, we’ve been covering the Nightmare on Elm Street series, which has been a lot of fun to revisit for this lifelong Freddy fan. We’ve currently up to the sixth installment, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, but you can catch up on all of our conversations on Apple, Patreon (where we have tiers that provide no ads and exclusive episodes) or wherever you prefer to listen to casts of pods.