The Greatest Showman (2017)
2017
PG
The story of American showman P.T. Barnum, founder of the circus that became the famous traveling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
User Review
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WHAT I LIKED: There are certainly things to like about Hugh Jackman's passion project 'The Greatest Showman,' as the version of events it's attempting to tell does pack some lovely core ideas about being yourself regardless of adversity, and many of the leading performances within it - particularly of course Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron's - are rather captivating.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The problem with the film is that whenever its narrative raises a key point about its characters or the surrounding society, it manoeuvres them with a song. Now you could argue that that's the very point of a musical, but a good musical has songs that successfully deal with these things in resonant ways, and frankly 'The Greatest Showman's just don't. Yes despite great melodies and lyrics devised by 'La La Land's Pasek and Paul, the film decides to play each and every musical number for pure and simple joy-factor, and that's a real problem because the songs are where all of the important stuff happens. In the end this means the great story lacks any genuine affecting resonance or emotion and instead feels rather flat and lifeless.
That may not be such a problem if the songs really were as joyful as they're trying to be, but even there the film stumbles as you already don't care about most of the characters, and the musical moments are then brought to life terribly - auto-tuned within an inch of their lifes and delivered with horribly contrived instrumental backing.
VERDICT: A nice story told badly, 'The Greatest Showman,' gets lost in translation thanks to its pivotal and yet horribly-executed musical numbers.0 member like this review.
