☆☆☆☆
You may think The Greatest Showman is a biography of circus-master P.T. Barnum, but as Barnum himself famously never said, "There's a sucker born every minute." This isn't a biography. The Greatest Showman bears no resemblance to real life, there's not a shred of reality in the thing.
The Greatest Showman is rather a piece of modern moviemaking razzle-dazzle, a toe-tapping, smile-inducing musical whose only real fault is that it is all smoke and mirrors, even the songs are deceptively catchy; you won't come out of the theater humming a single note, and you may not even understand why that grin is on your face.
It's a fizzy, sumptuous concoction of a movie designed to go down easy, which it does indeed. Why can the life of Alexander Hamilton be reduced to a giddy musical and earn such praise while the very same people who applaud that creation with gusto are likely to thumb their noses at this one? Why, indeed -- cultural snobbery is one of the running themes of the movie, as if its makers are mildly apologetic for what they've made, which is a shame, because it is something else.
Every bit of it seems manufactured to wring the most possible enjoyment out of the moment; it's as if everyone involved in the movie had been told that the show could close at any moment; everybody seems to be having a miraculously wonderful time, almost like they expect they're performing in a flop. But it's not. That's the biggest, most unexpected thing of The Greatest Showman -- it's so much better than it has any right to be.
It begins with an extended prologue that feels for all the world like a long opening number in a Broadway show. It covers an enormous amount of ground with lightning speed and so little relation to reality that it sets the stage well for what is to come: None of this movie is to be taken as a serious reading of P.T. Barnum's life and times, it's merely artifice to share some of the same shameless showmanship of the man himself -- and in doing so, to become an uncannily effective, if knowingly schmaltzy, anthem for embracing individuality.
That first number features two back-to-back songs by the team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who also wrote the songs for last year's splendid La La Land and begins with Hugh Jackman as an adult P.T. Barnum before flashing back to his Dickensian childhood in New York before giving us some simple shorthand for the romance that will define his life (and the film), and by the time it's over Barnum is married to the beautiful blonde Charity (Michelle Williams) and they're dancing on rooftops and having children. A few more minutes and Barnum is out of a job and creating the idea of a uniquely American oddities, while one of his precious daughters suggests that maybe the unsuccessful venture needs some living creatures in it, and -- presto! -- Barnum has the idea for a circus.
And that's just the first 15 minutes of the ultra-lean 1 hour, 45-minute running time. The Greatest Showman knows it can't let its energy flag for a moment, so it doesn't. It packs as much into its story as it can. There's Barnum's partner Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron), and his own romantic affair with a trapeze performer (terrifically played by the multi-talented Zendaya); there's Barnum's own relationships with his performers, particularly a bearded lady played with both sweet emotion and a massive singing voice by Keala Settle; there's a trip to England where Barnum meets Swedish singing sensation Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) and brings her to America, finally winning over a particularly harsh newspaper critic (Paul Sparks) ...
And that's only half of The Greatest Showman. There's a fire, there are elephants, there's Queen Victoria, there's the half-built Flatiron Building, there's racism and intolerance and bigotry, there's poverty and wealth ... this film has it all.
And that is not in any way a bad thing.
The Greatest Showman wants first and foremost to entertain you, and first and foremost it does. While the songs may take on a rather pop-infused sameness, and while there are no nuanced characters or deep insight, there's fun, there's emotion, there's music that is more than sufficient for the task, there's nonstop visual eye-candy, and there's the impassioned commitment of Hugh Jackman. He may not convey a particularly complex character, he does perform a particularly complex role. Jackman seems mightily committed to ensuring the whole thing succeeds, and if it all rests on his back, you can be sure he's got some strong muscles there because he lifts it all up higher.
There are other fabulous moments, like the defiant anthem of self-love and self-acceptance This Is Me that comes roaring out of Settle's throat like a sonorous freight train; she delivers one of the movie's indisputable high points, as does Zendaya in a breathtaking love song that looks as if it were snatched directly from a Cirque du Soleil show.
Lightning charged, The Greatest Showman doesn't let up for a second. It wants only to please, and in that it succeeds. Find out more about Barnum by reading a book or revisiting the Cy Coleman 1980 musical. There are plenty of ways to find out if Barnum himself deserves credit for creating an American art form -- or for paving the first step along an American road to over-commercialized artistic ruin.
The Greatest Showman doesn't care about any of that, and rightly. It just wants you to love it for what it is, a rousing, splendid musical, a story that makes you smile and grin and move your feat to its incessant rhythm, a film that wants you to cheer when the down-on-his-luck hero gets the break he deserves.
In another era, The Greatest Showman would be exactly the sort of tonic we need for our angry, embittered, cynical times. In the 21st century, we're not going to allow it to be that, I'm afraid; our voices are too scattered for just one voice of optimism to lift them all up. But The Greatest Showman can at least make you feel better about things for a couple of hours.
If that's not the hallmark of a terrific film, I don't know what is.
Viewed Dec. 24, 2017 -- Reading Grossmont
2000
The Greatest Showman is rather a piece of modern moviemaking razzle-dazzle, a toe-tapping, smile-inducing musical whose only real fault is that it is all smoke and mirrors, even the songs are deceptively catchy; you won't come out of the theater humming a single note, and you may not even understand why that grin is on your face.
It's a fizzy, sumptuous concoction of a movie designed to go down easy, which it does indeed. Why can the life of Alexander Hamilton be reduced to a giddy musical and earn such praise while the very same people who applaud that creation with gusto are likely to thumb their noses at this one? Why, indeed -- cultural snobbery is one of the running themes of the movie, as if its makers are mildly apologetic for what they've made, which is a shame, because it is something else.
Every bit of it seems manufactured to wring the most possible enjoyment out of the moment; it's as if everyone involved in the movie had been told that the show could close at any moment; everybody seems to be having a miraculously wonderful time, almost like they expect they're performing in a flop. But it's not. That's the biggest, most unexpected thing of The Greatest Showman -- it's so much better than it has any right to be.
It begins with an extended prologue that feels for all the world like a long opening number in a Broadway show. It covers an enormous amount of ground with lightning speed and so little relation to reality that it sets the stage well for what is to come: None of this movie is to be taken as a serious reading of P.T. Barnum's life and times, it's merely artifice to share some of the same shameless showmanship of the man himself -- and in doing so, to become an uncannily effective, if knowingly schmaltzy, anthem for embracing individuality.
That first number features two back-to-back songs by the team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who also wrote the songs for last year's splendid La La Land and begins with Hugh Jackman as an adult P.T. Barnum before flashing back to his Dickensian childhood in New York before giving us some simple shorthand for the romance that will define his life (and the film), and by the time it's over Barnum is married to the beautiful blonde Charity (Michelle Williams) and they're dancing on rooftops and having children. A few more minutes and Barnum is out of a job and creating the idea of a uniquely American oddities, while one of his precious daughters suggests that maybe the unsuccessful venture needs some living creatures in it, and -- presto! -- Barnum has the idea for a circus.
And that's just the first 15 minutes of the ultra-lean 1 hour, 45-minute running time. The Greatest Showman knows it can't let its energy flag for a moment, so it doesn't. It packs as much into its story as it can. There's Barnum's partner Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron), and his own romantic affair with a trapeze performer (terrifically played by the multi-talented Zendaya); there's Barnum's own relationships with his performers, particularly a bearded lady played with both sweet emotion and a massive singing voice by Keala Settle; there's a trip to England where Barnum meets Swedish singing sensation Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) and brings her to America, finally winning over a particularly harsh newspaper critic (Paul Sparks) ...
And that's only half of The Greatest Showman. There's a fire, there are elephants, there's Queen Victoria, there's the half-built Flatiron Building, there's racism and intolerance and bigotry, there's poverty and wealth ... this film has it all.
And that is not in any way a bad thing.
The Greatest Showman wants first and foremost to entertain you, and first and foremost it does. While the songs may take on a rather pop-infused sameness, and while there are no nuanced characters or deep insight, there's fun, there's emotion, there's music that is more than sufficient for the task, there's nonstop visual eye-candy, and there's the impassioned commitment of Hugh Jackman. He may not convey a particularly complex character, he does perform a particularly complex role. Jackman seems mightily committed to ensuring the whole thing succeeds, and if it all rests on his back, you can be sure he's got some strong muscles there because he lifts it all up higher.
There are other fabulous moments, like the defiant anthem of self-love and self-acceptance This Is Me that comes roaring out of Settle's throat like a sonorous freight train; she delivers one of the movie's indisputable high points, as does Zendaya in a breathtaking love song that looks as if it were snatched directly from a Cirque du Soleil show.
Lightning charged, The Greatest Showman doesn't let up for a second. It wants only to please, and in that it succeeds. Find out more about Barnum by reading a book or revisiting the Cy Coleman 1980 musical. There are plenty of ways to find out if Barnum himself deserves credit for creating an American art form -- or for paving the first step along an American road to over-commercialized artistic ruin.
The Greatest Showman doesn't care about any of that, and rightly. It just wants you to love it for what it is, a rousing, splendid musical, a story that makes you smile and grin and move your feat to its incessant rhythm, a film that wants you to cheer when the down-on-his-luck hero gets the break he deserves.
In another era, The Greatest Showman would be exactly the sort of tonic we need for our angry, embittered, cynical times. In the 21st century, we're not going to allow it to be that, I'm afraid; our voices are too scattered for just one voice of optimism to lift them all up. But The Greatest Showman can at least make you feel better about things for a couple of hours.
If that's not the hallmark of a terrific film, I don't know what is.
Viewed Dec. 24, 2017 -- Reading Grossmont
2000
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