They’re defying gravity — and testing my patience.
The new movie “Wicked,” based on the long-running Broadway show, is doing big business at the domestic box office. Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the musical “Wizard of Oz” riff is expected to gross more than $100 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, adding to its already robust $144 million take.
I thought it was just OK — please keep yelling at me about that. But Hollywood needs strong performers after a rough year, and getting back audiences who’ve given the cinema the old heave-ho is a win for the industry.
Yes. Except when they sing.
Or whip out their phones to film the screen.
Or generally behave like spoiled, mannerless brats.
Audience members at “Wicked,” reports say, are culture-less barbarians who can barely comprehend that they are outside of their own home. They’re a pack of whiny preschoolers who paint their faces green and make a scene as they shriek the songs of Stephen Schwartz to the extreme irritation of those around them.
Sitting with hundreds of paying strangers, the selfish jerks rudely belt out “Defying Gravity” and patter along to “Popular.”
How obnoxious.
This annoying glee club has been so coddled and socially deprived, they think they’re in the shower or doing karaoke in Koreatown. Or at Marie’s Crisis in the Village on a Tuesday.
“They don’t know how to be in public places,” one peeved ticket buyer told The Post.
My guess is they probably don’t know how to sing either.
The impromptu showtune-fests have gotten so out of control that AMC was forced to ban crooning in their theaters like they’re the town from “Footloose.”
Good on them, but it’s a shame the situation had to come to a proclamation.
Is America so enamored with constant self-expression and my least favorite modern phrase — being “seen” — that people can’t politely sit still and watch a film for 2 ½ hours?
Must they make every second of this communal experience all about them?
The bad behavior isn’t limited to concerts nobody asked for either. Self-absorbed photogs are capturing whole scenes with their mobile devices to post online — a practice commonly known as, um, piracy.
So, we get to pay $20 to watch somebody’s blindingly bright phone make an illegal TikTok video for minutes on end.
Hollywood, seemingly pleased with all the fan enthusiasm and the profit it generates, hasn’t decried any of this insanity. One “Wicked” star outright encouraged the rotten trend on national TV.
Pouring gas on the fire, Erivo, who plays future Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba, gave the hell chorus the green light.
“I’m OK with it,” the Tony Award winner said during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “We spent this long singing it ourselves, it’s time for everyone to sing.”
Wrong! After the previews are over, it’s time to sit down and shut the hell up.
I’ll echo what Patti LuPone shouted after she stopped a performance of “Gypsy” on Broadway in 2009 when a man in the front row started snapping photos of her:
“Who do you think you are?!”
