Review: The Greatest Showman
I wasn’t initially going to see The Greatest Showman, I didn’t have enough interest in the subject matter or the genre to give a damn, but a few friends and friends of friends who aren’t the target audience declared it as actually a really good film and a fun experience to witness. And since La La Land managed to surprise me despite its musical nature I decided I’d give it a go and see if this could be another surprise and show me that musicals can be more than shallow, flashy and dull.
Spoiler alert; it doesn’t.
Set in the 19th Century, the film tells the ‘slightly’ true story of P.T. Barnum, one of the first men to invent what became the circus of today with flash, pizzazz and showmanship, after marrying his childhood sweetheart Charity Hallett and whisking her away from her wealthy father to live an uneventful but comfortable life with their two daughters Caroline and Helen. Despite this Barnum wishes for more, and after losing his job due to bankruptcy he cheats his way into taking a massive loan from the bank to open a museum dedicated to the weird and wonderful.
The museum doesn’t open too well so Barnum decides to try for some Live acts and searches the country for ‘freaks’ to perform to an audience in what he now calls his Circus, despite judgement from critics and bigots the circus is a massive success. Looking to appeal to the upper-classes, Barnum introduces himself to playwright Phillip Carlyle and soon afterwards Swedish singer Jenny Lind in an effort to give his shows more mass appeal, but as the money rolls in his army of oddballs start felling thrown to the sidelines.
Aside from the vast inaccuracies (I don’t know how many but from what I’ve read Barnum was much more of a shit than the film portrays) the story’s biggest issue is that it’s pretty flimsy, the first 4 decades are covered in half a song and then it just keeps jumping from there, not really caring about how anything’s connected just so long as they can get to the next song. Part of me wants to believe that there’s just too much of Barnum’s life to cover with his fraying marriage to Charity, his relationship both personal and professional with Jenny Lind and his own bigotry towards his circus acts all being touched upon and none really giving any chance to go anywhere and as a result we’re left with a film that’s half-assing any part that doesn’t involve singing but as we’ll get to later, those aren’t enough to carry the film.
Character work is pretty much nom-existent, I don’t know if this is just a pit-fall of the musical genre but for someone as morally complex as Barnum making a song-and-dance about his life feels like a cop-out and the whole thing just lacks any substance to it. Perhaps most baffling about a film that’s trying to dedicate itself to the underdogs is that none of the circus acts are giving any characterisation at all, in fact I think most of them don’t have any speaking lines at all, Lettie the bearded lady and Charles the dwarf are giving some one-on-one time with Barnum but even that equates to barely 2 minutes and other than their own song (This Is Me) the ‘freaks’ are basically ignored.
Still better than how the real Barnum treated them but let’s not keep going to that complaint.
Who isn’t ignored is Phillip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler, played by Zach Efron and Zendaya, Carlyle is a young playwright, born from aristocracies but already bored of it all and joins Barnum for the chance of something new, Wheeler is one of the acts in Barnum’s circus who has the terrible social outcast disease known as being black and a trapeze artist. Alright I’m partially joking, being black in this time-frame was a terrible time and the real Wheeler probably did suffer from racism... except there wasn’t a real Wheeler, and there wasn’t a real Carlyle, this contrived, forced love story is even more contrived and forced because the film half-heartedly threw it in there so we could have an outcast romance with the only ‘freak’ that still looked attractive and wring another fucking song out of this cast. Neither one of them was very interesting, Efron fared better by making Carlyle somewhat decent but like the rest of his peers, Wheeler is basically ignored unless there’s a song making this half-assed romance even less interesting.
The women in Barnum’s life equated to his wife Charity, played by Michelle Williams whose only job is to look in the distance worried and disapproving and Jenny Lind played by Rebecca Ferguson whose only job is to sing and try to fuck Hugh Jackman. That’s it, that’s all there is to both characters, neither one of them is given anything to work with, Williams least of all to the point where the film feels like it’s forgetting she exists half the time. As for Ferguson, aside from the lip-syncing her portrayal of Lind was fine for what the film was going for but again when you look at real life and realise that not only was the real Lind not even remotely interested in Barnum but the whole affair subplot was just shoe-horned in as a way of creating drama it just lacks any conviction. To be honest even not knowing that the whole thing reeks of bad writing but even more so once you look it up.
Out of everyone I will say that Jackman does the best job, his showmanship quality and love of theatrics are in full-swing here and he definitely sells that part of Barnum’s life, having played old grumpy fuck Logan earlier int he same year the change is palpable and Jackman does well in both roles. It’s in the writing that Barnum fails and not just in the historical inaccuracies but that does play a part, with so little substance to the story it’s hard to get a bead on Barnum and whether he’s a family man trying to bring joy to both his own children and the outcasts of society or if he’s nothing more than a con-man making a quick buck on others laughing at the misfortunes of others. In another film that might have made for a good moral quandary but here it feels like they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too, the film is so focussed on making Barnum the good guy that whenever it tries to put in some of his own bigotry they go back on it moments later. In one scene the circus acts complain that Barnum is focussing too much on Jenny Lind and the acclaim and profits from her performances then the very next time they see him they say he gave them a family. Forget the watered-down version of history it’s just crappy writing trying it disguise itself as depth without even bothering to leave the shallow-end.
The film is the directorial debut of Michael Gracey and credit where it’s due the production design is top-notch, from the period clothing to the full spectacle of the musical numbers, it’s all very impressive, the choreography most of all with several songs featuring lavish dance sequences. For what the film is giving us, the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world captures Barnum’s sense of wonder and magic that he’s trying to share with the world through his acts, it might be a staple of the genre but I do like that the themes of the film are present throughout its design, it’s a good way of showcasing the side of Barnum they’re pushing.
The problem is that’s all the film has going for it in fact the argument could be made that the film is trying way too hard to push the style and songs down your throat to distract you from the fact that it’s all a bland, clichéd mess. Popularity goes to your head, family is important, fitting in isn’t the be-all/end-all, pretty people will fall in love at first sight, everything Disney has been telling us for the last 80 years and done a much better job at it. The film’s biggest sin is that it’s just dull, while the song and dance routine can distract people from the lack of any worthwhile characters, any scene with just talking means absolutely nothing because without a story these are just a way of breaking up the music, fair play the film knows what its target audience are here for but for an outsider like myself I was bored waiting for them to get to the point.
And then when they did get to the point it was just as tedious, for an apparent musical they commit the cardinal sin of making the songs boring, maybe I’m missing something from the theatre experience but I’ve no idea why this soundtrack exploded the way it did. I will there are some standouts, I wasn’t a huge fan of This Is Me but I can understand why that became the film’s signature track for its lyrics about saying Fuck You to everyone, From Now On had a rousing chorus that fitted that final explosive revelation before the ending and (while personally I think it’s too short) the opening The Greatest Show had a good build-up and decent release to open the film with.
But then you have the duds, Never Enough is probably the only one of the rest that stands out and is powerful enough to be recognised but it goes on too long and repeats itself too often to be classed as anything other than alright. The rest of them; A Million Dreams, Come Alive, The Other Side, Rewrite The Stars, I could not tell you a goddamn thing about any of them, I remember the Jackman/Efron dance sequence from The Other Side but the actual song just did not stick with me in any form, hell none of these did, I actually completely forgot that Come Alive was even in the film until I looked up the soundtrack and I only saw this yesterday. It’s the problem with using songs to tell the story rather than having the songs enhance the story, if the story isn’t even any good to begin with then a dull song is even more so because of it.
I’m fully aware that I’m not the target audience for The Greatest Showman but I like to think I have an open mind and I’m willing to let a non-Disney musical to pull another La La Land on me but this just did not have anything to it, it falls into too many of the traps that put me off the genre, the painfully clichéd story, the lack of any characters and a soundtrack that’s only half-good. There parts that I like, the good songs are really good and Gracey’s production compliments them well and ignoring the real Barnum being an asshole, Jackman’s performance is easily the best part of the film but it’s not enough to warrant a recommendation. I did not care for this and I’m still struggling to understand the popularity.
5/10