Review:
"The Greatest Showman"
Release Date: Dec. 20, 2017
Rating: PG Running Time: 105 minutes If you are the man responsible for putting on “The Greatest Show on Earth,” you deserve more than one musical based on your life and accomplishments, correct? Unrelated to the 1980 Broadway production Barnum, the musical The Greatest Showman offers a colorful and ebullient biography of P.T. Barnum with that focuses strictly on his family the founding of "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater” and his infatuation with Swedish singer Jenny Lind. His political career probably did not lend itself well to catchy songs about chasing dreams and overcoming adversity. Hugh Jackman brings unbridled energy and passion to the role of the famed ringmaster, although the film itself often struggles to keep up with it silver-tongued, high-kicking main attraction. A rag-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story told through songs with a contemporary pop feel, The Greatest Showman presents Barnum as a sincere and generous working-class stiff who is desperate to prove wrong his rich and snooty detractors at every possible turn. To achieve this, Barnum converts his museum to an attraction filled human curiosities, such as General Tom Thumb. Director Michael Gracey and credited screenwriters Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon nimbly avoid portraying Barnum as an exploitative huckster prone to perpetrating hoaxes to draw large crowds to his establishment. This is a P.T. Barnum who seeks to empower society’s outcasts, and if he makes a quick buck or two in the process, so be it. With lyrics penned by La La Land’s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, each earwormy anthem performed by Jackman and/or his fellow cast members reinforce the musical’s plea for acceptance. For Barnum, this means finding his place in New York’s high society, a feat easier said than done for the son of a tailor. This leads to Barnum to turn his back on his primarily business to promote the career of singer Jenny Lind, who is played by an enchanting Rebecca Ferguson, with the goal of winning over his skeptics in the press and getting slapped on the back by the rich fat cats who wouldn’t be seen a mile from his circus. Barnum’s relationship with Lind naturally causes some pause for concern for his wife Charity, who is played by a squandered Michelle Williams. The Greatest Showman positions Charity and daughters Caroline and Helen as the driving force behind Barnum’s ambitions and crazy schemes—Charity’s father thinks she married below her—but the film fails to find Barnum’s family as intriguing as the one he creates for himself at the circus. The Greatest Showman does a better job examining the interracial romance that develops between Barnum’s junior partner, Zac Efron’s wealthy and successful actor Phillip Carlyle, and Zendaya’s trapeze artist Anne Wheeler. Speaking to the obvious prejudices of the day, Phillip and Anne’s love affair also puts into context the absurdity of Barnum’s obsession with his social status. More important, it also results in the entrancingly staged Efron-Zendaya duet “Rewrite the Stars.” Otherwise, The Greatest Showman boasts serviceable choreography that rarely borders on true spectacle. It makes you wonder how Tim Burton—whose fascination with society’s outcasts is borne out of love and empathy—would handle The Greatest Showman’s musical sequences and its subject matter in general. Certainly with a lot more wonderment than director Michael Gracey, who plays it too safe time and again when it comes to the true stars of Barnum’s circus. Barnum himself would probably think The Greatest Showman lacks the imagination and the curiosity that made him a household name. Robert Sims Aired: Dec. 21, 2017 Web site: https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-greatest-showman |
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