The Greatest Showman is the musical film we never knew we needed. The negative reviews it has had from critics can't make it any less than the one-of-a-kind spectacle that it already is and will always be. It has everything that seemed lacking from relevant, comparable musicals in recent memory – the relatability that La La Land restricts because of its characters, the originality that Pitch Perfect deprives us because of its covers, or the musicality that Hamilton limits because of its genre. No other musical film in the last few years has been as viral than The Greatest Showman. And it is spreading like a wildfire through word of mouth with all the best reasons.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING
There are two major things that top critics are complaining about The Greatest Showman, thereby causing its Rotten Tomatoes score to fall to 55% as of writing.
Their first issue is the artistic license that led to historical revisionism. Accordingly, P.T. Barnum, the character Hugh Jackman plays, was not as honorable as the man the movie portrays him to be. He made his way to the top and was called The Greatest Showman by means of fraud and allowing cruelty to animals while his shows were staged.
This backlash could have been significantly prevented had The Greatest Showman used a fictional character instead of Barnum. It must have been a hard choice for Fox to consider since going with a character who actually existed in history would make the film more appealing but I think critics are seriously ignoring the fact that this is a musical INSPIRED by the imagination and ambition of P.T. Barnum. I refuse to align the comparison of a film inspired by someone with a film about the actual life of that person. The artistic license argument would really have heavier weight if The Greatest Showman is a biographical drama. Thank God it isn't.
The second issue critics are raising about the film is the depth of its plot. This is something you may also have heard from a friend who already watched it. They say the plot is one-dimensional, that the series of events are predictable and that the character development seems rushed. Some people say that apart from the grand musical numbers, nothing is really happening in the story of The Greatest Showman.
Somehow there is some truth to these observations but I also believe that people who watch this film and come out of the cinema talking more about what they feel the movie failed to deliver are missing the point of what The Greatest Showman is about.
The weaknesses in the plot are effortlessly forgivable for the very reason that for a musical film with a 2-hour run time and songs that exceed 40 minutes in total, people should not expect characters to solve their conflicts by 30-minute conversations or confrontations. Musicals don’t work like that, I think. Characters sing songs and those should already tell stories. The Greatest Showman is special in this sense. Its songs express more depth than what the characters say. If that isn't magical, I don't know what is.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE MISSING
I somehow feel sad for those who did not like The Greatest Showman after watching it. The sound of the buildup on that opening scene featuring Jackman's silhouette gave me the first of the many goosebumps I had all throughout the movie. The transition from "The Greatest Show" to "A Million Dreams" feels like a dream (for lack of a better, more contemplated description). The sequences are flawless and from the minute Hugh Jackman appears and starts singing, you'll remember less of Wolverine and more of him as an artist.
Even the most orchestrated numbers of all the musical numbers in this film, such as "Come Alive" when the special people were recruited and "The Other Side" at the bar with Jackman and Zac Efron outperforming each other, are going to make your head pop to the beat, regardless if you are a kid or someone who considers yourself too old to dance. It's one of the great things about the consistency of using pop music in The Greatest Showman. It appeals to more people than perhaps any other genre of music does.
My personal favorite moments on the film however are those that focus more on the lyrics instead of the movements.
"Tightrope", from a perspective of a woman who misses her husband but believes that timing is everything, surely feels like a movie within a movie. You may watch only this portion of the film and you'd be able to re-echo the stories behind the lyrics and emotions conveyed by Michelle William’s character.
All star-crossed love stories we've heard before, defying the universe and all it refuses to offer, can be reimagined during "Rewrite The Stars", an epic rendition from Zac Efron and Zendaya who couldn't be more stellar than each of their movements in this 3-minute iconic moment.
Forgiveness, acceptance and courage intertwine during "From Now On", the last number of the film. This is when Hugh Jackman's acting and musical talents shine the most. And by the time he sings the first line of this song in the movie, the lyrics already mean the world to everyone – to the characters and even to the movie-goers.
"This Is Me", the most famous song off the soundtrack, proves why it deserves that Golden Globe Best Original Song award as you feel the power by watching many of the society's underdogs finally say that they won't be broken down to dust. That diversity is glorious.
But perhaps the most powerful performance from The Greatest Showman is the divine solo performance by the character Jenny Lind with the song "Never Enough".
There is so much power brought about by Rebecca Ferguson's acting while she sings this song for the first time in the film. She might not have recorded the song personally since a 'The Voice' finalist, Loren Allred, actually provided the singing vocals for this character but Rebecca Ferguson was a tour de force, all viewers inside the cinema I was in all held our breaths from her first note to the last. The song sounds like a piece many people would use as an audition song to singing contests. That's probably why the song impacts audiences that way.
If you are the type of movie-goer who is greatly affected by the critical reviews of a film when you decide whether you’d watch or not, consider that despite average reviews from critics, the audience score of The Greatest Showman on Rotten Tomatoes is at 90% with more than 17,000 users rating it. This translates to the fact that despite negative reviews from some top critics, majority of people who watched, re-watched and are still planning to watch again can't get enough of The Greatest Showman.
This movie is a coming together of social empowerment, elegance of dreams and transcendence of music. It may just be your favorite movie of all time, you just haven't watched it yet.
This movie is a coming together of social empowerment, elegance of dreams and transcendence of music. It may just be your favorite movie of all time, you just haven't watched it yet.
RATING: 10/10
xxx
@callmenorby
