The Greatest Showman (2017)

I guess it is fitting that a movie about a man who is famous for (most likely) saying "there is a sucker born every minute" is itself mostly a lie. Not based on much of P.T. Barnum's actual story, instead it is a fantasy version of events, The Greatest Showman is a fraud. And perhaps there might be something wonderfully beautiful about that if the film was itself not such a bore. This is about a man who knows how to entertain and yet there is little entertainment going on here.

First The Greatest Showman is a musical, and musicals succeed or fail based on their music. The Greatest Showman is filled with trite disposable pop songs. Think the kind of original music they used to write for Glee but without any of the irony. Anachronistic in a way that feels disjointed, the music of The Greatest Showman is cheap and forgettable. It's the kind of stuff a boyband or girlgroup sings. Unlikely to go down in the annals of classic movie music. Despite the promotional materials reminding us that the lyricist of La La Land, the music here isn't in that league. Here the lyrics are sentimental and trite, selling cheap platitudes about love and believing in oneself, the kind you hear in 1000 other songs.

But again I guess that's fitting since the movie's script and story fall into the same pattern. The story is ripe for all sorts of great morals about diversity and uprising of the underdogs. But the film tokenizes this so strongly. The film is squarely about a white man and his pretty blonde family. Despite the way he treats his "freaks" they embrace him anyway, so grateful for his emancipation, without any cost to him. The cliched interracial romance at the heart of the B-plot is right out of a TV melodrama. The film speaks to things on the surface only and never lets any of its issues get in the way of its music video format.

By the way the film feels so lip-synced you spend your time waiting for the lips not to match the dialogue.

The story is pathetically bad at points. The subplot about real life opera singer Jenny Lind is eye-rollingly awful. Despite none of it being based on real life, she supposed falls so hard for Barnum, and he remains so steadfastly chaste like all good romantic heroes, that she leaves behind all her American success over being jilted. His wife, who has shown an immense amount of dedication throughout the story, suddenly is moved to leave him over this nothingness, just to set up a ridiculous and callous conflict for our hero to face. It feels as cheap and it sounds and rings so completely hollow.

Director Michael Gracey has made his film look good. There is an artificial staginess to the film which I felt fit the theme. But he failed to imbue the film with any sense of magic. It's all an illusion, a sleight of hand. Sing a few cheesy but catchy songs, smile at a few cheesy but sweet after-school-special moments, and go home lulled into complacency.

I'm not buying this ticket.

The Greatest Showman
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya,  Rebecca Ferguson, Keala Settle
Director: Michael Gracey
Writers: Jenny Bicks, Bill Condon