Directed by: Michael Gracey
Written by: Jenny Bicks, Bill Condon
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron
IMDb Link
I finally got around to seeing this after a barrage of recommendations from people over the weekend. Thankfully, it wasn't a waste of time.
*
The film follows P.T. Barnum (Jackman) as he essentially invents show business. He rises from nothing and clashes with taste and class and art to provide a show anyone and everyone can enjoy; the film literally justifies its own existence with a philosophical meta-narrative of entertainment over art.
As far as entertainment is concerned, the film is a resounding success. The numbers in the movie are excellent, if a little gaudy, brilliantly and elaborately choreographed with support from wonderful music and an inordinate amount of enthusiasm. They are escapism at some of its finest, with a personal favourite being the exchange between Zac Efron and Zendaya, which carries with it more chemistry and tension than they exhibited in any other part of the movie. Every moment the characters were singing rather than talking is like a spell the movie casts on you to dazzle you for a few minutes to hide the fact that it doesn't have much else to show.
This is because the movie glosses over most of its story for the sake of easy transitions, and most of what it does show is simple and shallow. Conflicts rise and fall in this movie in mere moments, and are sometimes resolved in ridiculously excessive fashion with no actual discussion; the film blasts through entire stories that others would take the care to make their central focus. Everything is so easily resolved when presented it's a wonder that they bothered to have dialogue at all, and didn't just present its non-musical portions as purely emotional tableau. It was a sincerely stark contrast, switching between a few minutes of music that had so much love and care poured in to it and a story that was so quick and superficial it hardly needed to be there.
There's no denying Jackman's charm, however, or any of the other characters, particularly Keala Settle's Lettie Lutz, who exhibits an incredible amount of endearing emotion in the short amount of actual screen time she gets. The actors are offering something that feels more sincere than the rest of the movie, which is part of why the musical moments of the movie are so much more meaningful than the rest; when the movie just needs to rely on expression, the actors are the ones that sell it with gusto, even if the writing doesn't offer more than a couple of minutes to the characters.
The Short Version: The Greatest Showman is a lot of really well made musical numbers in between a glossy story with easy but ultimately empty platitudes.
Rating: 6/10
Published January 24th, 2018
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