Wicked: For Good will be released in theaters on November 21.

Midway through Wicked: For Good, at the climax of one the musical’s many songs, Cynthia Erivo is harshly backlit by that pesky Ozian sun that has somehow made it into virtually every frame of this story. The camera pans slowly away, and, ah, a respite from all the squinting you have to do in order to see anything that’s going on in this movie! But the relief is short-lived, because the shot eventually settles on a giant waterfall that is… reflecting all of the light from that very same sun, obscuring the main character once more behind a wall of photons.

I use this small example to illustrate Wicked: For Good’s central problem: it has all of the issues of the first movie, compounded by the fact that Act II of Wicked the musical is, famously, just not as good as the first.

The story has jumped in time an unspecified number of years, and the tricky Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his mouthpiece Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande) have convinced the people of Oz that the green-skinned “wicked witch” Elphaba (Erivo) is Public Enemy Number One. Meanwhile, Elphaba, who’s been exiled to the woods, is dead-set on drawing back the curtain on the Wizard’s fakery and saving the lives of all the sentient Animals who are progressively forgetting how to speak. It’s a Very Serious setup for a Very Serious movie, with none of the effervescent pizzazz of the first act/film. That’s the trouble with the dreary back end of this story—you’ve already had all the fun of getting to meet everyone for the first time, and now all that’s left is to watch them make themselves miserable.

It’s a weird tonal shift that just doesn’t match the inherent absurdity of the environment. Wicked plays things very sincerely with its very silly story (I say this as a fan), but there are always moments in the show—a hilariously mispronounced word here, a well-timed aside there—that wink at the ridiculousness of the premise. In contrast, watching Wicked: For Good is like watching a war movie, complete with action sequences, wrenching interpersonal drama, and a harrowing refugee escape scene that provides the backdrop for one of the film’s two original songs, the somber don’t-let-the-bastards-get-you-down anthem “No Place Like Home.” The self-serious atmosphere makes talking animals and the occasional mention of the community of people that calls themselves “Munchkins” even more jarring. Look, they already tried to do “grimdark Wizard of Oz” with the childhood trauma-inducing Return to Oz and Syfy’s Tin Man miniseries, and (again, I say this as a fan) it didn’t really work those times, either.

And then there’s the fact that you can’t see most of it anyway. Director Jon M. Chu and cinematographer Alice Brooks’ commitment to backlighting every scene with a sun, a lantern, or a wall of torches persists here—probably because Wicked and Wicked: For Good were shot at the same time—and was already roundly criticized by critics and fans the first time around. The second film is darker in every sense of the word (aside from many of Grande’s scenes, thank goodness), and there are environments that are so dimly lit you can’t make out Erivo’s face at all.

It’s all very frustrating, because, as with the first film, you can tell that real work was put into building opulent environments for the actors to stomp around in. Chu outdoes his own wedding staging from Crazy Rich Asians here, throwing Glinda a party overflowing with flowers and fit for a fairy queen. The tower Elphaba eventually transforms into her lair during the triumphant villain song “No Good Deed” looks like a battleground from Elden Ring. Cool, tactile sets shrouded in shadows are maybe marginally better than the washed-out lighting of the too-bright first movie, but, given how inertly everyone is often staged in this film, you still get the sense that you’re watching people walking around in sets.

The songs though are almost enough to make you forget about all of this. Erivo and Grande are so good it makes the fact that these movies aren’t that great even more disappointing, and they especially nail all the complicated, contradictory emotions and themes running through this sequel. Wicked: For Good does its best to yank them back and forth—allies one moment, enemies the next, and then back to besties again—but they both keep themselves steady, electrifying things whenever they’re sharing the screen. Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero, the third member of their isosceles love triangle, holds his own with the two of them, even though he doesn’t get much to do here besides roll his broad shoulders and smolder directly at the camera, and that’s fine. (Michelle Yeoh’s propaganda minister Madame Morrible remains the weak link, which is a shame, as she’s the only truly villainous character in this whole thing and clearly relishes any opportunity to be mean.)

Really, the biggest problem with Wicked: For Good is its atonal pacing—songs take ages to finish, while characters are constantly being tossed into scene after scene with very few transitions in between to fully explain why anyone is acting the way that they are. And it’s doing all this while also stepping on most of the source material’s best bits—Elphaba’s big Wicked Witch laugh moment, which ignites cheers in the theater, is barely gestured at. Wicked 2 is certainly long enough to lay everything out in a sensible manner (at 137 minutes, it’s only 20 minutes shorter than the first movie), but seems to think that audiences will just go ahead and fill in the blanks for themselves. Its songs and talent are certainly good enough to coast on, but it still fails to make the case for translating a beloved stage show to two just-okay films. It’s time for this bubble to pop.