The Greatest Showman Review

Christmas time is a popular time for families to head off to the theaters. As such, Hollywood dumped a whole ton of new movies on us right before Christmas. Since it was improbable to cover all of them so quickly in addition to spending time with family around Christmas, I had to prioritize which ones I saw first and critic reviews from "The Greatest Showman" promised me that I didn't have to focus on that one. So I didn't. I saw "Jumanji" first and caught up on "Ferdinand" second, enjoying both of them to certain extents. But then following a wave of harsh critical reactions towards "The Greatest Showman" which has caused it settle around a 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, I noticed a strong wave of high praise from casual audiences who seemed to be loving the movie, causing the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes to soar to 90 percent, which is in stark contrast to a certain space movie that came out recently. Thus I became both curious and confused as to which side of the fence I was going to end up on. What is it about this movie that's causing such distance between audiences and critics and which side was I going to end up on? Because, yes, I have disagreed with critics plenty of times, despite what some may think. Turns out, though, that I am with them on this one.

When I walked out of the theater, I had both a literal and metaphorical headache that I didn't have when I walked in. Yes, it's true that there were probably other factors that gave me the actual headache, but the movie had me so frustrated that I will probably enjoy telling people that this movie literally gave me a headache. I was frustrated not because I had witnessed an epic disaster, but because there were a lot of things that were genuinely great about this movie that were overshadowed by too many things that had me pulling my hear, pushing my face in anger and squirming around in my chair that probably didn't help this growing headache that I was getting. There is a good movie in here somewhere. In fact, I saw the potential of a great movie that could turn into a classic musical. I wanted to be a part of the crowd that has been loving the movie. But I started coming up with several nitpicks. I was hoping that those nitpicks would go away, but they just started festering inside me and they refused to go away. There came a point in the movie where I was no longer enjoying anything on the screen and I wanted to both scream and cry at the screen, but I held myself in check due to the sold-out screening of people who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Time to stop beating around the bush. This is a movie about P.T. Barnum. Well, kind of. It's apparently not accurate at all to his actual story, but I'll get to that later since that wasn't actual my biggest concern. But the movie attempts to tell what ends up being a partial fictional version of a character named P.T. Barnum who invented this thing called the show business. Or the circus. A term that Barnum coined in the movie after one angry critic called his show a circus. In an attempt to laugh in the face of professional critics, he called his show a circus, which certainly has a good ring to it. The movie is about Barnum's rise from rags to riches as he goes to having no money after growing up in poor circumstances to creating this grand phenomenon that would live on long after Barnum's death in the late 1800's. This is a premise that had a lot of potential as it could teach us that, regardless of your upbringing, if you put your heart and soul into something, you can be successful in that thing. And I loved that idea. It's a good positive message. And we certainly got that in this movie. But only in the first 10 minutes. He went from rags to riches extremely fast and suddenly I was a bit blindsided because I was then wondering where the movie was going to go from there.

We certainly started off on the right foot. We had a great opening musical number that put a huge smile on my face. It was bright and colorful. There was great singing from talented musicians as well as some incorporation of well-used dubbing for those who aren't as good at singing. There was also fantastic dance choreography. That song transitioned well into telling the story of Barnum with his childhood lover, Charity. Barnum and Charity were essentially forbidden lovers where Charity grew up in a fancy, prestigious household and Barnum was the poor kid. The drama of the situation was properly set up. Then we started singing a song and magically by the end of the song these two kids were suddenly happily married as Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams with two adorable daughters. That was quick. Then we set up more drama where Hugh Jackman was fired from his job, but Michelle Williams loved him anyways, thus being the perfect wife. But Hugh Jackman still needs a job. Suddenly he comes up with a genius idea to create this museum full of unique and different individuals. I'm pretty sure we sang another song there and magically by the end of the song, his show was a huge success despite the equally as strong opposition towards it.

The nitpick was that this movie seemed to be moving rather quickly and we covered a lot of time space during the musical numbers that acted as a bridge between two different parts of the story. But I was still enjoying myself and I thought the musical numbers were good songs. It actually wasn't until Hugh Jackman met Zac Efron that a huge problem manifested itself. Zac Efron is successful in his own right, but Hugh Jackman wants him on his team. He approaches him and Zac Efron is bitterly opposed to this idea. Again, proper drama set up that I was excited to see play out. But then they broke out into song. Yes, the song was decent. The dance choreography was well done. But I finished the song feeling cheated out of what could've been some great cinematic drama as the two of them were best friends and business partners by the end of the song. Did the movie really just use a musical number to lazily patch together two story arcs so we could quickly move onto the next portion of Barnum's life? A musical number should be used to enhance a scene and not as a bandage to string together a lazily written script. I kindly begged the movie to not do that again and I was willing to forgive the movie if that was the only blunder in this musical that we encountered.

For the rest of the movie following that scene, I was fixed on this idea of how these songs were being used in the movie. I don't know how often I have thought super in depth about the construction of a musical, but I was thinking to myself that we should play out the drama in a musical in a proper way, using the musical numbers to enhance the moment or add the necessary emotion to the film, not as an easy way out to quickly progress the plot so that you can cover a lot more ground in a very detailed and complicated story. But it was when I zoned in on this thought that I successfully ruined my experience with this movie. Because I wanted my musical done right. I was suddenly thinking back to "La La Land" from last year wherein every song served a specific purpose in enhancing my experience with the movie. Thus I was becoming increasingly angrier and angrier with "The Greatest Showman" because they were doing everything wrong. Every moment of drama in the movie was solved with a song. After every song, we were onto a new part of the story. A story that I became increasingly uninterested in the further we progressed because there also seemed to be a very interesting story in here that was being ruined by lazy writing and poorly timed musical numbers.

That leads me to my previous point that I briefly mentioned briefly about this not being the actual story of P.T. Barnum. I didn't know anything about him prior to this movie, thus I was ready to learn about him and the great things that he did. But I got this strange inkling that the movie was lying to me about his story. Things seemed off. It just felt like this was a complicated individual that was being Hollywoodized or sanitized in order to fit the perfect outline of this colorful, bombastic musical that they wanted to do. I wanted there to be intense drama. I wanted to feel conflicted about certain things that he was doing. But I wasn't. Everything felt too easy or too perfect. Think of the perfect Hollywood movie about a man rising from rags to riches than being a little too obsessed with said riches and that's exactly what this movie portrayed. From a storytelling perspective, everything felt too perfect, too easy and too polished. I didn't care about it at all. And it didn't help things that when good drama started rising, the musical numbers were thrown in and completely ruined the moment. Then I go and learn after the fact that P.T. Barnum was actually a fairly complex, controversial character? You mean there was a great story here that was completely wasted?

I know I've had a complicated relationship with musicals in the past as I've never really given high priority in my life to diving into Broadway musicals (I still have never listened to or watched "Hamilton") and I nearly got crucified by an angry mob of fans several years back when I admitted to not liking the film adaptation of "Les Mis," an opinion I still hold to even though that review would look a lot different if I redid that review today. But I do consider myself a fan of the genre as I genuinely love a well-done musical and I don't think it takes much effort for a musical to please me. But "The Greatest Showman" frustrated me to no end. It has well-written songs that are sung well by this cast. I think I will enjoy re-listening to the soundtrack. There was great acting and an overall colorful and bombastic feel to it. But the story they told of P.T. Barnum was completely botched. Not only was it essentially fictional with how off they were, but the fictional story they told of this complicated man was dull and boring. An atrociously bad screenplay was made worse by horribly timed songs that were used solely to bandage this lazy screenplay rather than add depth and emotion. I didn't buy it at all and I left really angry. Thus my grade for "The Greatest Showman" is a 4/10.