The Greatest Showman

So I've seen a good amount of films with my family but there are a couple of films that for a number of reasons, the time of year it comes out, the subject, and the actors involved, I sometimes feel like I need to watch it with them to get the full effect and The Greatest Showman was a movie, from the start I wanted to wait and see with my parents. It was a musical that came out around Christmas time, and the trailer was just good.

There were other things about this movie that I discovered as it got closer to coming out and this weekend I was finally able to go and see it with my family and it was definitely worth the wait. The Greatest Showman is a great family film.

The Greatest Showman is a musical that follows the story of the creator of the Big Top Circus, PT Barnum (played by Hugh Jackman). While PT Barnum was a real person, this movie does not claim to be based on a true story and for good reason. If you do the research, you can probably guess that PT Barnum has some shady stuff in his history and was not as great of a person as Hugh Jackman is playing him to be in this movie. While the movie was a little more conscience of this than I thought it was going to be, if you're going to see this movie, just make sure you're not thinking it's super realistic or based on truth. It is very much Hollywood fluff, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing for this movie. Just as long as you have that in mind, you can have a pretty fun time with this movie.

PT Barnum lives a humble life with his wife Charity (played by Michelle Williams) and their two young girls. After losing his job, Barnum takes a risk, gets a loan and opens a museum to expose people to the weird and the unnatural. It starts as a wax museum, but it eventually turns into a show full of "freaks", including a dwarf (played by Sam Humphrey), a bearded lady (played by Keala Settle), a dog man, trapeze artists (one of them played by Zendaya) and a bunch of other different acts.

Along the way Barnum wants to expand his entertainment ventures and enlists the help of a young benefactor by the name of Phillip Carlyle (played by Zac Efron) and a talented Swedish opera singer by the name of Jenny Lind (played by Rebecca Ferguson).

The story is essentially a rags to riches story and stresses the importance of being who you are, family, and the effects of wealth and fortune can have on a man.

I think the best way to enjoy this movie is to not take it too seriously. You're only going to be disappointed if you try and see this as a biopic on PT Barnum. But on the other hand, you're probably going to be disappointed if you think this is a big social justice piece about acceptance because even that element is pretty lacking. Especially in the main attracting song from the trailer, "This is Me", you've got all these disenfranchised people singing how they will be seen and they don't care what others think, they're going to live proud. And in a way they sing in defiance of Barnum and Carlyle... but at the same time it kind of loses its effect when Barnum and Carlyle (the two wealthy white men) are still reaping in the money from these people dancing and singing about how they are defiant... you get how that's a little contradictory?

The Greatest Showman is not a master piece of storytelling and it's not exactly complex. I'll talk more about the characters but even the main ones are very surface level and not exactly complicated. The story is pretty cheesy and minimal. However, all of that aside, where this movie shines is the music, dancing, and just how committed people are to this movie.

Absolutely nobody is phoning in their performance for this film. In the film and in the marketing of the film, Hugh Jackman made this seem like this was some kind of passion project and it's the most important movie to come out in 2017. Everyone is committed to their role no matter how small and it is apparent in the music and the choreography of the dance numbers.

The performances are so crisp, the singing is fantastic, and the songs are so catchy. I had already heard some of the songs from the soundtrack prior to watching the movie and when the rest of the soundtrack was made complete in the movie for me, I just had fun with every single song and had to complete the soundtrack on my Itunes.

Because the good parts of this movie were so good, it really outshines the glaring issues with the film. It's a movie that you really don't need to take that seriously and more just have fun with. The weird thing is, I'm getting older and I always enjoy a movie that can get to the point and make the movie accessible in a run time less than two hours. It's not necessary but it's something that I do appreciate.

The Greatest Showman clocks in at about an hour and forty five minutes and I almost feel like they could have added another 15 to 20 minutes to develop characters more and flush out the story more and it would have been actually pretty good. A great example of this comes in Zac Efron and Zendaya's characters. While I like these two, I think they have good chemistry, and their performances are good, you don't really know much about them or why they fall in love besides he sees her and thinks she's pretty.

Again a lot of the emotion and plot is driven by the music so I can go to a Youtube of these two's song and get the jist of what their relationship was supposed to be and the same can be said for a lot of characters, but if you take everything in as a whole, there are a lot of things that are really glossed over just to create a fun family experience.

The Greatest Showman could have been a little bit more indepth and shown the true life of PT Barnum but I don't know how that really would have blended with what they wanted to do, which was entertain people with some really good music and great bright, and vibrant performances.

Seriously, if you go into this movie with expectations that it's going to be a biopic, a period piece, or even a call for social justice, you are going to be disappointed.

Overall, The Greatest Showman is kind of like a really good piece of candy. In reality, it's just sugar and fluff and you really should take it all in with a grain of salt. But that doesn't prevent it from being just down right entertaining. The energy of the music keeps you going for the run time that could have easily been longer and everyone is giving their all.

It's not gonna blow your socks off but you will definitely feel good coming out be humming the music for a while to come.

But what do you think of The Greatest Showman? Did you enjoy it? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. This video is a great example of how committed Hugh Jackman was to this film even before it came out. They explain the scenario and if you're a fan of theater or singing in general, you know how music can just gather you up and overwhelm you with emotion. This did that for me. Enjoy!