The Greatest Showman (2017)

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Rating: PG
Director: Michael Gracey
Writers: Jenny Bicks, Bill Condon
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron
Release Date: 2017 (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In the 19th century, young P. T. Barnum and his tailor father Philo work for the Hallett family. Barnum falls for their daughter, Charity.

When Charity attends finishing school, she and Barnum write to each other until reuniting as adults (“A Million Dreams”). They eventually marry and raise two daughters, Caroline and Helen, in New York City. They live a humble life, and though Charity is happy, Barnum craves more (“A Million Dreams (Reprise)”).

Barnum loses his shipping clerk job when the company goes bankrupt, due to a typhoon that sank all the firm’s cargo vessels. He later secures a bank loan, deceptively using his former employer’s lost ships as “collateral”. He opens Barnum’s American Museum in downtown Manhattan which features various wax figures.

Ticket sales are slow, so Caroline and Helen suggest showcasing something “alive”. Barnum adds “freak” performers, such as bearded lady Lettie Lutz and dwarf man Charles Stratton (“Come Alive”). This garners higher attendance, but also protests and poor reviews from well-known critic James Gordon Bennett.

Barnum renames his venture “Barnum’s Circus” and recruits playwright Phillip Carlyle to help generate publicity (“The Other Side”). Phillip is mesmerized by the African American trapeze artist, Anne Wheeler, but he hides his feelings. Phillip arranges for Barnum and his troupe to meet Queen Victoria.

Barnum persuades famed Swedish singer Jenny Lind to tour America, with him as her manager. Lind’s American debut is a success (“Never Enough”). During her song, Phillip’s parents see him and Anne holding hands and he quickly lets go. As Barnum gains favor with aristocratic patrons, he distances himself from his troupe, advising them to work without him. Dejected, they decide to stand against their harassers (“This Is Me”).

When Phillip and Anne attend the theater together, they run into Phillip’s parents. They chastise him for “parading around with the help.” Phillip tries to convince Anne that they can be together, but she disagrees, saying they will never be accepted socially (“Rewrite the Stars”).

As Barnum takes Lind on a U.S. tour, Charity, who stays home with the girls, feels isolated from her husband (“Tightrope”). While on tour, Lind becomes romantically attracted to Barnum. When he rejects her advances, she threatens to quit and later retaliates with a kiss at the end of her last show (“Never Enough (Reprise)”), which is photographed by the press.

Barnum returns home to find his circus on fire, caused by a fight between protesters and the troupe. Phillip runs into the burning building to save Anne, not knowing that she has already escaped. He suffers serious injuries before Barnum rescues him.

Bennett tells Barnum that the culprits have been caught and that Lind has cancelled her tour after Barnum’s “scandal”. Barnum’s mansion is foreclosed, and Charity (having found out about the kiss) berates Barnum for his obsessions. She takes their daughters to her parents’ home.

Devastated, Barnum retreats to a local bar. His troupe finds him there and say that despite their disappointments, they still consider themselves a family. Inspired, he resolves to build a new show and not let ambition blind him (“From Now On”). Phillip awakens in a hospital with Anne by his side, while Barnum and Charity reconcile.

A recovering Phillip offers his share of the profits to help Barnum rebuild the circus in exchange for becoming a full partner, which Barnum readily accepts. To economize, Barnum transforms the enterprise into an open-air tent circus.

The revamped circus is a huge success (“The Greatest Show”). Barnum has Phillip take his place as the ringmaster so Barnum can spend more time with his family. Barnum leaves the circus early on an African bush elephant to attend Caroline and Helen’s ballet recital.

The Review

The Greatest Showman is a standard-issue rags to riches biopic story, but done as a musical. A man (P.T. Barnum) who came from nothing rises to fame and fortune with the help of a faithful wife and an unlikely team of other outcasts and misfits. He loses sight of himself and where he came from in the midst of the chase for more. He realizes he is fruitlessly trying to fill a hole inside of himself that cannot be filled. Finally, he finds himself again as the film ends and we get a happy ending. This is a standard-issue plot for a reason – it generally works. Unfortunately, I just did not connect with this movie at all.

The biggest gripe I have with the movie is its pacing. It rushes through its emotional hooks. I never felt like I had a reason to be invested in the Zac Efron / Zendaya relationship because so little time was spent in its creation. I never really got invested in the individual side characters within the circus. I didn’t spend enough time with Barnum, when he was at home, to know whether I was supposed to be rooting for or against his almost-affair taking place. The movie gave me such a sympathetic Jenny Lind that it was difficult to know how I should feel about things.

Generally, in a musical, the songs are the connective emotional tissue of the story. The music convinces the audience to care about the plot arc and also tells them *how* to care about it. The problem with The Greatest Showman is that for the most part, the music just isn’t very good. There are two absolute bangers in the score – “Never Enough” and “From Now On” – but outside of those two songs, nearly everything else is completely forgettable. The movie needed the music to be better.

Probably the biggest casting / plot arc victims of the music were Zac Efron and Zendaya. It was really hard to care about their characters, their love story, etc., without either of them having a strong memorable musical number to sing, and thereby create investment on my part as the audience. I think both are talented singers, thus I blame the music itself. Two more hit songs probably would have made a dramatic difference in how I feel about the movie. Oh well.

My least favorite moment in the movie was the weird and brief brawl that immediately preceded the fire. The whole thing was so cringey that it took me way too long to reconnect with the seriousness of the situation within the story. Instead of that fight being a dark and horrible moment, preparing us for even more horrible things to follow, we very temporarily had this odd attempt to create an audience catharsis – with the bearded woman and her misfit friends taking on the racist townies. But then oh yeah, the building is on fire and, oh yeah, Phillip Carlyle is trapped in the fire. And oh yeah, Barnum ran into the building while it was on fire, it seemed to collapse behind him while his children are watching, but then he came out unscathed with his friend.

All of that just needed to be paced more slowly, and with more intention.

One other general note about the movie-watching experience: I struggled throughout the movie with the volume. There is a lot of whisper talking, followed by loud and bombastic music. Then we returned to the whisper talking. I played around with the TV settings but never worked out anything that kept me from needing to do somewhat constant volume adjustments.

This movie is rated PG, and might be marketed to all ages, but you probably do want to warn your kids before watching that we see a kid full-on slapped in the face by an adult near the beginning of the movie. The rest of the plot is also relatively heavy, too, covering an almost marital affair, an inter-racial relationship (it’s controversial in the 19th century and part of the plot), a brawl spurred on by racism, and an almost death in a fire.

Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams were both good leads and they both gave good performances. I just wish they had been given more to work with. I have not gone to the effort to find out whether there is a director’s cut of this film, but my guess is that if there is one, it’s a much better final product. The movie was pretty close to being good, but just needed a little more time in a few spots to create opportunities for the audience to invest in its story emotionally. This just felt like the studio told someone they needed it to get the runtime as close to 90 minutes as possible and that rush kept it from working.

I don’t give this a recommendation, but if you like musical theater, you might enjoy the music and costuming enough to overcome the film’s shortcomings.