{"id":52567,"date":"2018-03-27T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T13:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/?p=52567"},"modified":"2018-03-25T19:12:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T08:42:14","slug":"movie-review-greatest-showman-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/2018\/03\/27\/movie-review-greatest-showman-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – Greatest Showman, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Principal Cast :\u00a0<\/strong>Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Keala Settle, Sam Humphrey, Austyn Johnson, Cameron Seely, Paul Sparks, Yaha Abdul-Mateen II, Natasha Liu Bordizzo.
\nSynopsis:\u00a0<\/strong>Celebrates the birth of show business, and tells of a visionary who rose from nothing to create a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation.<\/h5>\n

********<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to believe a film that\u2019s gestated so long in star Hugh Jackman\u2019s producer role could be so shallow. Attached to the role of circus impresario PT Barnum since the mid 00\u2019s, Jackman\u2019s work as the titular showman is an engaging, emotional romp that delivers acute tear-jerking magnificence similar to that he espoused in Les Miserables<\/em><\/a>. Unlike\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0show-stopping film, however, The Greatest Showman<\/em> is both the worst and best of Hollywood\u2019s glossy, big-budget musical romps, eschewing dramatic depth for whizzbanger visuals and toe-tapping musical numbers. Your enjoyment of The Greatest Showman<\/em> will depend largely on your acceptance of superficiality, which the film almost requires in order to escape the numbing histrionics and wooden character beats, but the music is excellent and the story has got that sense of \u201cwe must please the crowd at any cost\u201d feel to it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Phineas Taylor Barnum (Jackman) marries well above his station, the aristocratic Charity (Michelle Williams – Manchester By The Sea<\/em><\/a>), after promising to accomplish his dream of owning a lavish home and acquire wealth. After being made redundant after his accounting firm goes bankrupt, Barnum decides to open a \u201cfreak show\u201d, engaging the services of all manner of local people with deformities, unusual attributes or other special talents, and although the show is panned by critics, the crowds love it. To help bring his show to the nobility, Barnum offers local playwright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron – Baywatch<\/em><\/a>) an associate partnership, with Carlyle falling for acrobatic performer Anne Wheeler (Zendaya – Spider-Man: Homecoming<\/em><\/a>). Barnum\u2019s visions of show grandeur begin to take their toll on his family as he brings Swedish operatic sensation Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson – Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation<\/em><\/a>) to America on a national tour, with the friction between Barnum, his wife, and the assembled talent leading to a revelation that family is more important than wealth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Glossy, undeniably earnest and certainly crowd-pleasing, The Greatest Showman<\/em> contains problematic characterisation and a lack of depth within its shiny framework, as it barrels the audience with thunderous musical numbers and a sense of the ridiculous. The real PT Barnum, co-founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus (which finally closed its doors in 2017, some 146 years after it was founded) was reputed to be a far more salacious and self-obsessed man than that depicted here by Hugh Jackman. Jackman\u2019s version of the character is all smile and glitz, very little actual heartbeat, despite the film\u2019s aim of injecting familial themes of ill-focused wealth acquisition, and although the actor himself if one of very few legitimate triple-threat showmen getting about Hollywood today, not even Jackman\u2019s vaunted skills can engender a sense of truth to a man so complex.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In truth, The Greatest Showman<\/em> isn\u2019t a film set on being honest with us, given its propensity for skirting historical fact and supplanting it with whimsical half-truths. The film\u2019s screenplay boasts the talents of Jenny Bicks (writer on shows such as\u00a0Sex & The City<\/em>,\u00a0The Big C<\/em>, and the creator of\u00a0Men In Trees<\/em>) and Hollywood writer\/director Bill Condon (Beauty & The Beast<\/a>, Dreamgirls<\/em>, and writer of Best Picture winner\u00a0Chicago<\/em><\/a>) so you\u2019d think there\u2019s be meat on these well-tuned bones, but the film\u2019s simplistic approach to Barnum as an upright but misguided entertainment boffin lacks resonance or competency. Michelle Williams\u2019 lovely Charity is the beguiling committed wife, although forced into frowning and wistfully hoping her husband would pay more attention to her. Zac Efron\u2019s disconsolate and angry Carlyle offers contrast to Barnum\u2019s zany energy, and his subplot romance with Zendaya\u2019s fiery Anna perplexes with its indifference to the plot, and the gaggle of \u201cfreaks\u201d Barnum assembles, including Keala Settle\u2019s bearded lady, Sam Humphrey as the tiny Tom Thumb, and Luciano Acuna Jr as Dog Boy (named so for obvious reasons) are unique without having any real arcs whatsoever. Themes of friendship, acceptance of those different than us and loyalty are all present, just not honoured with enough weight to really carry the film\u2019s more solemn moments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Consequently, the film feels empty, devoid of anything that will linger in the mind far beyond the songs or Jackman\u2019s charismatic performance. Although, having said that, the songs are all pretty darn great (particularly \u201cThis Is Me\u201d, the Oscar-nominated thematic opus around which the film\u2019s freak-brigade assuage their social status) by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, and John Debney\u2019s accompanying orchestral trills more than accentuate whatever sugar-high hit the singing achieves. Of note, the Efron\/Zendaya duet \u201cRewrite The Stars\u201d and \u201cpitch\u201d song \u201cThe Other Side\u201d by Jackman and Efron are worthy of entering the American songbook lexicon in their own right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Earnest performances, delightful musical numbers and a high-octane directorial debut from Michael Gracey can\u2019t salvage emotional destitution in The Greatest Showman<\/em>, a candy-floss song-n-dance film that is enjoyable in one sense, but desperately frustrating in any other. Granted, my favourite all-time film is Moulin Rouge<\/em> so I\u2019m aware of comparing films of a similar disposition, but nowhere in between Jackman\u2019s toothy stagemanship or Gracey\u2019s exhilarating camerawork is there a film of any substance. Purveyor of fakery seems meta-referenced by the film\u2019s own inadequacies, giving us the showy bright lights of Barnum\u2019s world without any real depth or nuance. It\u2019s a thunderous extravaganza wrapped up in a glittery package, a happy meal movie that suffices initially but never settles the craving for more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Principal Cast :\u00a0Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Keala Settle, Sam Humphrey,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48482,"featured_media":52571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-review"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",1152,720,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd-300x188.jpg",300,188,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd-768x480.jpg",640,400,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd-720x450.jpg",640,400,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",1152,720,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",1152,720,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",1024,640,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",540,338,false],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",24,15,false],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",48,30,false],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",96,60,false],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",150,94,false],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd.jpg",300,188,false],"sow-carousel-default":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/the-greatest-showman-hd-272x182.jpg",272,182,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Rodney Twelftree","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/author\/rodney\/"},"category_info":"Movie Review<\/a>","tag_info":"Movie Review","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48482"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}