Review: The Greatest Showman Might Just Be The Right Title For Hugh Jackman
- Dec 29, 2017
- 2 min read
The Greatest Showman, the Hugh Jackman-helmed P. T. Barnum biopic, is far from a perfect film. For a film using circus sideshow freaks to deliver a message about being proud of who you are, the film isn't even proud enough of its 'freaks' to tell any single one of their backstories. None of the characters really get names or backstories besides Barnum and his wife, but even then, the story is wildly inaccurate and ignores huge chapters in his story and flaws in his character. But The Greatest Showman, like Barnum himself, is willing to bend the truth to deliver a good show - and deliver it does.
After the tale of how Barnum (Jackman) met his wife Charity (Michelle Williams) as children, Barnum is fired from his job at a bankrupt shipping company, leaving his two daughters with wishes and dreams that he cannot fulfill. He deceptively uses the shipping company's sunken boats as collateral to take out a loan and buys a wax museum. He begins to fill the new Barnum's American Museum with people with oddities and recruits playwright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron) to bring out the element of performance for his museum. But the townspeople are disturbed by the freaks, and Barnum is distracted by big dreams of touring the country with Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson), a famous European opera singer.
Being a musical, the highlight of the film is absolutely its song and dance. The first moments of the film with "The Greatest Show" and the emotional "A Million Dreams" shortly after are starkly contrasting in tone, but are both good warm-ups to some of 2017's best set pieces, choreography, cinematography, and long sweeping takes. Jackman steals his own show, as usual, but Zendaya, Efron, and the show's bearded lady Keala Settle deliver stand-out performances in both singing and dancing. I particularly enjoyed the choreography of "The Other Side", Jackman and Efron's upbeat bar dance, and "Rewrite The Stars", a high-flying 'forced romance' song with Efron again and Zendaya.
The Greatest Showman starts out by telling the audience "This is the greatest show". As a movie, it seriously falls short on characters, substance, historical accuracy, CGI, and even pacing to some degree. But as a show? It might just be the greatest.
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