Movie Review The Greatest Showman

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2017 – Spoiler alerts Annoying, anger inducing musical biopic of circus entrepreneur and con-man, P T Barnum, played by Hugh Jackman. This is not to be confused with the Michael Crawford led musical, Barnum. Most biopics get a few details wrong, but this one barely gets anything right. Barnum is treated as literally rising up from pennilessness to riches but he made an early fortune in lottery ticket sales. He is treated as a champion of the oppressed and genuinely concerned for the unique individuals in his charge but he just shamelessly ran freak shows. His first exploited faked ‘freak’ was a black woman in her 80’s who he claimed to be 160 years old and the personal slave to George Washington. When she died, Barnum old tickets to her autopsy. This is left out of the film. The ‘freaks’ depicted are shown being exaggerated in feature. The tallest man is put on stilts, while the fat man is made to look even fatter with cushions under his clothes. That at least shows what Barnum could be like. Tom Thumb is seen as a willing participant in the shows in the film. In reality he was bought by Barnum while still a child. The film does show Barnum’s hiring of the famous opera singer, Jenny Lind, but a/. The soundtrack has her singing insipid pop songs, and b/. She did not entrap him with a media wide publicity stunt kiss betraying any kind of love affair. She left him because he was exploiting her and his other acts too much. Before that she gave all her earnings from the Barnum tour to charity but the film treats her as extremely mercenary. The sub-plot with Barnum’s assistant having an affair with a black acrobat girl, despite racist opposition is totally made up by the movie writers, and the plot is left under-developed. Neither character ever existed. Though the film hints at racism, oppression, and exploitation, and redneck prejudice, it fails to address these issue well and the fact that Barnum was one of the worst offenders of his age. The film also depicts arguably the worst on screen presentation of Queen Victoria ever. The ‘freaks’, the unique individuals Barnum exploits, including a dog-boy, a bearded woman, Siamese twins, and his most famous attraction, Tom Thumb, get precious little to do, and we learn little of their back stories. Only one song, performed in anger when Barnum excludes them from a high society reception, gives them any real opportunity to shine (and the film’s best song). Everything is flawed, from excessive CGI, songs with repetitive lyrics and endless reprising, with one song repeated in endless montage denoting the ageing of adult characters, while their children stay perpetually pre-adolescent. Another song, yelled rather than sung repeat the line ‘This is the greatest show’ over and over as its chorus as if trying to brainwash the viewers, (no it isn’t remotely a great show). One song endlessly repeats “oh, oh, oh, oh, oh….” too. Every problem is solved by throwing a song at it. The rope climb acrobatics defy the laws of physics, Barnum survives in an impossible to escape fire trap building and none of the songs are particularly memorable. The final image of Barnum’s ballet loving daughter resigned to only playing a tree in a ballet is totally out of place with the rest of the movie. This vacuous drivel has a fan following comparable to Mamma Mia though it is trying to imitate the styles of La La Land and Moulin Rouge. I really hated every minute of this. Just five minutes after the screening I mentioned to someone who enjoyed it that I found the songs repetitive. Ge asked me for an example but I couldn’t recall the line at all – the songs are so unmemorable. I re-listened to the songs later to recapture the repetitions for this feature. Youtube – Another critique of the movie. Arthur Chappell