An extremely critical review I wrote on "The Greatest Showman", back in 2017, after seeing it in theatres.
Hugh Jackman stars as P.T. Barnum in this visionary musical, which tells the story of Barnum’s rise to becoming one of the world’s “greatest showmen” from extremely humble beginnings. After getting married and having a family, Barnum begins to dive into his long held dream of showing off unique curiosities to the world; entertaining audiences with the extraordinary. Soon his dream comes to life with his circus, which features trapeze artists, bearded ladies, and the like, and he becomes propelled into his business and away from his family. As he takes on new business partners and becomes further enthralled in his newfound fame, he also must deal with scandals and people who want him to get his “freak show” out of their town.
The show drives itself off of its dance-y dance-pop musical acts and fiery, colourful visuals. It is a tour-de-force of entertainment, and it never allows the viewer to be bored. However, at the same time, the movie in itself is a sugary mess of clichés and cheesy, cheap song-writing. I am not one to usually be so critical of a movie, and I’m not saying this simply because the critics thought so poorly of the film. It is, in itself, a movie for certain people, and I can see why; it’s an entertaining sugary jaunt about following your dreams and achieving success and being “unapologetically yourself”. However, for others, such as I, this film is one big cliché.
From the first number in the show, you get the taste of the rather cheesy tunes that populated 90% of the show. Rather than grandiose Broadway numbers, songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land) opted for a more “modern” approach, with light, boppy “feel good” tunes—in other word, major cheese-fests, at least with the lyrics they went for. Each song follows the theme of having dreams, “lighting your light” and “letting it burn so bright” (actual lyrics from the song “Come Alive”), and even the leading grandiose song for the outcasts “This Is Me” sound horrifyingly familiar and cliché—“And I’m marching out to the beat I drum”, and “I make no apologies / This is me” which are all lines so overused that in this supposed P.T. Barnum biopic I was feeling slightly nauseous. It didn’t help that the 1800s setting mixed with the 2000s music made it feel even more fake and overproduced.
The plot is entirely predictable right from the beginning. You can see every major “plot twist” coming and at times it its simply appalling how obvious it is. I don’t typically notice clichés in a film, but I could not ignore the fact that this movie is positively stuffed to bursting with them. From the time when Queen Victoria bursts into laughter upon viewing Barnum and his circus performers instead of being infamously unamused, to the moment when Barnum’s business partner runs into a fire to save his romantic interest, there were times I was physically rolling my eyes. “Everyone is special and nobody is like anyone else!” says Barnum at one point; and I begin to feel as if I am watching a Kindergarten teacher’s presentation on being yourself. Not that it is not a worthy message, but the film made such a intense try at displaying this moral that after a while it simply lost it’s meaning.
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