Directed by Michael Gracey

 

Our modern era is rife with criticism of the past. It may have reached proportions of chronological snobbery in the most recent years but that doesn’t make it inaccurate. Unfortunately, that also means most movies that biographically detail famous figures meet an audience ready to point out, and aggressively hold against, anything the narrative swipes under the rug. Enter The Greatest Showman.

Hugh Jackman has been trying to get this movie off the ground for a long time. Thanks to 2016’s La La Land (the almost Best Picture winner last year), not to mention Broadway’s Hamilton, there is at least a moderate thirst for the musicals of yore. Just don’t expect animals rights abuse or exploitation of disfigured people in this P.T. Barnum myth. For that you can tune in to the fourth season of American Horror Story or HBO’s long-gone but never-forgotten Carnivàle.

No, this is the song-and-dance interpretation of Phineas Taylor Barnum. As played by Jackman (is the man never a star?), P.T. is a lowly tailor’s son that woos an upperclass girl who couldn’t be happier to give up her life of luxury for the dirty chimneys of New York’s roofs. The kind that only appear in the movies with the star-filled skies, already-perfectly-cleaned clothing hanging on the clothesline, and everyone with a song in their heart.

P.T. promises Charity (who has grown into a bright-eyed Michelle Williams) that he will one day make it by exploiting the people of the city. That’s not really what he says but when a small man with a gravelly voice named Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey) walks by inspiration strikes like lightning. Give the freaks a home and make a few bucks!

The Greatest Showman spends much time celebrating Dog Boy, Fatty (the fattest man on Earth, apparently), the Bearded Lady (Lettie Lutz), and a pair of black trapeze artists (one of which is played by Zendaya, who proves herself far more talented than I’d ever given her credit for, especially after Spider-Man: Homecoming) that represents the closest thing the movie is willing to touch on the slavery issue.

Remember, this is the mid-1800s here.

And the movie isn’t exactly comfortable in its own setting. So much so that a straw man reporter named James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks) is sprinkled into scenes to criticize Barnum but lose the argument definitively when it’s pointed out how happy people are.

It may also help that Barnum is given a pretty big pass, especially when you learn that he owned a slave named Joice Heth whom he claimed was 160 years old and George Washington’s nurse, displaying the blind and paralyzed woman until she died in her 80s, profiting from her exploitation. The anti-contraceptive laws of 1879 he enacted in Connecticut as a congressman are also absent, but understandable given that it had little to nothing to do with the circus.

The reason for material absence is because this is a musical and thematically that changes things. We need hope, dreams, and rising spirits. A sequence where he downs shots of liquor may surprise biographers who knew Barnum was a teetotaler but what does it matter when enjoying the rhythm of Jackman’s dancing?

As time goes on we meet Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron, in his fifth musical), a playwright and investor who falls for Anne Wheeler (Zendaya). The movie intermittently touches on their difficult relationship but really landed with me when the duo sang “Rewrite the Stars” mid-way through the movie:

What if we rewrite the stars?

Say you were made to be mine

Nothing could keep us apart

You’d be the one I was meant to find

It’s up to you, and it’s up to me

No one can say what we get to be

So why don’t we rewrite the star?

The song is a loud plea to fight against the tide of oppressive culture, a dangerous gesture at that time. Not really lingering too much on the subject, the movie makes the unfortunate decision to derail into personal infidelity territory with Barnum when he meets opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson). The two have a near-miss affair that upsets all of Barnum’s employees because the circus has started to flounder.

The bad news is the movie starts to drag and meander, the good new is the sideshow characters sing the best song of the film during this time, “This is Me”:

This is real, this is me

I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now

Gonna let the light

Shine on me

Now I found

Who I am

There’s no way to hold it in

No more hiding who I want to be

This is me

It is very likely the music will be nominated for Academy Awards, placing The Greatest Showman as a nice footnote in film history. The score was by John Debney (The Passion of the Christ, Iron Man 2) and Joseph Trapanese (Straight Outta Compton, Only the Brave), while the lyricists from Trolls and La La Land, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, sweep up the audience in the modern Hamilton soundscape.

The set pieces are attractive, while the choreography is visually aggressive and dynamic. Zendaya swinging through the sky, Jackman prancing as Ringmaster in his three-ring circus, or the power ballads of marching social justice warriors all find their place.

Good stuff to be sure but that doesn’t placate us enough to embrace the uneven production. It may be a Justice League situation, as director James Mangold (Logan) was brought in to oversee reshoots and post-production from first-time director Michael Gracey, much in the way Joss Whedon was brought in to remold Zack Snyder’s work.

Then again, maybe I’m too much a product of my time and it’s hard to let go into the fun and fancy free of the musical when the truth is so much more complicated.

 

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