For the best part of a year, audiences have been holding space for Wicked: For Good, essentially sitting on their hands waiting for the second act of the show to begin on the silver screen. It's a big ask. While widely agreed that the second half of the stage show has a stronger emotional register following the show-stopping Defying Gravity that closes act one, it's actually the weaker in terms of songs.

Following on, The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has employed Glinda (Arianna Grande) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) to lead a campaign against Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) while she does her best to spread the truth that the Wizard has no real power and is turning people on each other to keep his grip on power.

While there will be some excitement for the two new songs – There's No Place Like Home and The Girl in the Bubble, neither do much to help the feeling that the first film had all the good tunes. While Wonderful is a perfectly well placed song that allows for some pure Jeff Goldblum-isms, the three main songs that work are the ones most theatre fans will know. Both As Long As You're Mine and No Good Deed are burning with desire and resentment for lives not lived while For Good is as moving as you'd hope.

Erivo, Grande and Bailey are all fantastic once again, and allowed to deepen the characters more and show the complexities of them, while also remaining true to why people love them so much. It's a shame that the rest of the cast are given short shrift. Ethan Slater and Marissa Bode have the rumblings of a more interesting subplot that doesn't really go anywhere as much as it should.

When the film begins to dovetail into the The Wizard of Oz the film's fidelity to its stage counterpart begins to become its undoing, for such a long film it feels rushed and frantic, not giving enough time to the fun to and fro that could have been. The choice not to show Dorothy – fair in the stage show – but frustrating on screen is a misstep.

Even so, and despite its more frantic nature, Wicked: For Good continues to lovingly taking a look at what it means to be a rebel against dictatorships, how people will lie to you to get what they want, and how you must remain true to yourself at all times.

It's also a film that works because of the chemistry between the leads. Grande is still allowed to fill Glinda with humour that made her so endearing, but the deepening of her heart and soul allows for Grande to deliver a performance of much more power, while Erivo is able to enjoy herself a little more and show layers the first half wasn't able to. It's here that the film truly takes flight.

Chu might not always have the strongest grip on the CGI – some animals appear a lot less convincing than others – and his direction flits between grandeur and grating, but he is so clearly in love with these characters that it's hard not to have goodwill towards them all.

It's not so much that the film is disappointing, that would be too harsh a criticism. It's that the film is merely as good as it could be, given what the stage show offers. It wraps things up, but there's no feeling of cohesion – something that was never going to be in Chu's hands, and for what he has, he excels at.

It's neither wonderful, nor wicked, it's merely… good.

Wicked: For Good is in cinemas from November 21