I’m not going to lie. The only reason I watched Michael Gracey’s The Greatest Showman was that it was the topic of one of the sermons at my church. Each year we have a summer movie series (In 2018, the movies were Forrest Gump, Good Will Hunting, The Princess Bride, The Shawshank Redemption…I had seen all four, of course, and watched all of them again before that week’s service to refamiliarize myself with each of these amazing films. Then on Labor Day weekend, we have our Family Weekend, where the children of our church sit with their parents rather than going to the classes that they usually go to. We show a truncated version of a movie, and this year it was The Greatest Showman. So I added it to my Netflix queue. It arrived two days before my church service, and I watched it the night beforehand. I’m not a fan of musicals, although I will say that the incredible La La Land has, if nothing else, allowed me to consider that I could potentially enjoy a musical. And, while it certainly wasn’t my cup of tea, I did enjoy The Greatest Showman and would actually consider watching it again one day with one or more of my three young nephews.
The Greatest Showman fared much better with audiences (87%) than critics (56%). I could see that. I guess. There are a couple of genres that I struggle with reviewing. They include animated movies (which I don’t review), documentaries (that I don’t review), and musicals (which I sometimes attempt to review ~ La La Land, Les Miserables). At least like La La Land, The Greatest Showman was a film I could follow. I still am uncertain entirely what happened in Les Miserables, though I guess I liked some of the singing. AND if you are going to film a musical, you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do to get Hugh Jackman (Logan, Prisoners). Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but moviegoers were going to give this movie a chance (even if it was horrible) as long as Jackman was in it. Jackman can sing, dance, and bring depth to characters that so many other actors just cannot. The Greatest Showman is a musical retelling of Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum (Jackman), the visionary behind the legendary Barnum & Bailey circus. While inspired by true events, the film version is just that. While P.T. Barnum found the most famous circus in the industry’s history, this story was more of his dream how he wished it might have gone down than how it actually went down. Nonetheless, the movie never claims to be based on a true story, and if you read the fact versus fiction story from the link above, you’ll agree that the movie is a much more exciting telling of the formation of the circus.
Like many movies, The Greatest Showman tries to do many little things well rather than just focusing on one thing great. Set in the mid-1800s, the movie portrays Barnum as a fighter for people of abnormalities and disabilities and accepting things like multiracial relationships. In contrast, there was a multiracial relationship in this movie, portrayed between Barnum’s protege Phillip (Zac Efron – High School Musical, Neighbors) and trapeze artist Anne (Zendaya- Spider-Man: Homecoming) and one that was accepted by those in the circus (including Barnum) but not by many others (including Phillip’s parents), this part of the story was completely made up. Phillip and Anne’s characters were both completely fictional. An in terms of being a champion of those with physical disfigurements, this may be true, but he also clearly exploited them for profitmaking purposes. The film didn’t portray Barnum as all good, though it did spend a great majority showing all of the great things he did and downplaying some of the not-so-great things. Like everyone, shocker, he wasn’t a perfect person. But I’m getting way ahead of myself here.
After an opening number in the present, we meet Barnum as a boy. He is the son of a tailor father, and one of his clients is Mr. Hallet (Fredric Lehne – Zero Dark Thirty, Men in Black). Hallet has a daughter named Charity of P.T.’s age. The two form an instant friendship that sustains them while she is sent away to finishing school. They send letters back and forth to each other and, fast-forward maybe 20 years? 30 years later, P.T. shows back up to the same house of Mr. Hallet to take Charity (now played by Michelle Williams – Blue Valentine, Take This Waltz) away to marry her. Charity gives up living a life of financial stability (the Hallets are very well off) for a lifetime of love with P.T. Is everything perfect? Of course not. But this is a PG movie. Williams, who has been my favorite actress for the past decade, doesn’t bring out the same intensity in this role as in her heavier dramas. I certainly don’t think she was miscast. She was his rock for this movie. I just would have liked to have seen her with a bigger role and, really, seen her sing more than she was allowed to. She wasn’t used enough. If you get a Michelle Williams in your film, you keep her in as many scenes as possible. But their love story was believable, and you could tell she respected a man who followed his dreams…even when his tactics might have been a little different than your own.
After P.T. is laid off from his job, he cons his local bank to give him a $10,000 loan and opens up a museum in downtown New York with all kinds of oddities as he believes people are fascinated by this. But how is this that different from many of the other museums in the world’s greatest city? It’s not really. People reject what the museum stands for, and it fails to attract business. So P.T. goes a step further and searches the town for individuals with deformities, other oddities, or freaks. He finds a bearded woman named Lettie, an obese man called the Lord of Leeds who P.T. says his weight is 750 pounds even though it was “only” 500, a hair-covered man named Dog Boy, an 8-foot tall man, and conjoined twins. And rather than infusing this new small group as something to look at in a museum, he is inspired to name his new show “P.T. Barnum’s Circus” and fill it with various acts. And did he profit by putting these people on public display for exploitation? Yeah…but he certainly wouldn’t have phrased it in those terms.
When you break it down, The Greatest Showman is a movie you’ve seen a hundred times. It’s a rags-to-riches story that turns into a man becoming obsessed with his fame and wanting more of it. And who, at some point, gets humbled by it all. The movie adds an element between P.T. and Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson – Mission Impossible: Fallout, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) that didn’t really exist. While Jenny was a real person and was a big part of bringing money to the gate, there were many fictional elements about her, including a component that hints at unwarranted infidelity. P.T. might have been many things (good and bad), but by all accounts, he was a faithful and loving husband and father.
The song and dance is something that is always a little bizarre for me when watching a film. I mean, you have these characters engaged in some meaningful conversation just to see them continuing their story by singing? Since 99.9% of the movies I watch don’t have this transition, it feels a little off when I see it. That’s not to say that the singing wasn’t good because I guess it was. Some of the songs were catchy, and I could understand the purpose of each song in relation to the rest of the movie. There were plenty of actors who were able to showcase their singing ability. And I did appreciate that it wasn’t song after song after song (see Les Miserables). Instead, there was involved dialogue to connect these numbers. I’m not going to be rushing out anytime soon to see The Greatest Showman, The Broadway Musical if/when that ever comes out, but some of the songs I was able to get into far more than I thought I’d be able to get into.
This movie was decent and definitely should be seen by fans of musicals. It also would be a pretty good musical to introduce children to. But like all movies in which she stars, please #MoreMichelleWilliams.
Plot 9/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 8/10
87%