I’m just going to come out and say it: I loved The Greatest Showman. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for musicals, so I was perhaps already primed to like this film, but I think it delivered on what was offered in its trailers. While not without its flaws, Showman is a fun foot stomping jamboree for inclusivity that celebrates the family you choose as well as the family you’re born into.
While the music and lyrics come from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the same team that won a Tony for the hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen and wrote the music and lyrics for last year’s cinematic success La La Land, this is a very different film. La La Land was a love song written to Hollywood calling back to the hey day of movie musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. Showman, on the other hand, is a love song to Broadway. While I wouldn’t be surprised to see either or both of them end up on the stage at some point, Showman is clearly designed to be the more electrifying performance that makes the leap to Broadway most easily and naturally. The acrobatics nod to the ongoing diversification of the Cirque series of stage performances, while the music is far more crowd pleasing and likely to get an audience singing along and memorizing for repeat listens. The songwriting duo clearly have an ear for the modern musical audience and it shows to great effect in Showman. There is in fact a rumor going around that the studio originally wanted the film to be a so-called “jukebox musical,” much like Moulin Rouge (which is easily the closest movie musical comparison most people would already make), but was beat back by Jackman and Director Michael Gracey, who were adamant the film feature original music.
It’s no surprise that Hugh Jackman can carry as the leading man in a film musical. His last entry in the category was the mixed success adaptation of Les Miserables, in which he was more than capable of performing as Jean Valjean. Zac Efron was a question mark coming into this film. But for a brief karaoke performance in the comedy Bad Grandpa, Efron hasn’t had a real singing role since Hairspray where he played teenager Link Larkin. Following his trifecta of High School Musical movies, it’s easy to see why he avoided a singing role in a movie for so long. I have to say it’s nice to see this as his return to the genre. He might not be releasing any singles any time soon, but he’s a genuinely good singer, whose voice lends itself more to down home Bruce Springsteen rock and roll than modern pop, but fits in seamlessly with the vocal powerhouses of Showman. Standout performances from Keala Settle as Lettie Lutz (the bearded lady) and Zendaya, who not only sang well but had a very impressive act with Zac Efron consisting of acrobatics and high-flying rope work, were both truly electrifying.
The plot itself is a tale redone a million times. A down on his luck street rat builds a rich and powerful life for himself through a touch of luck, hard work, and gumption only to see it all slip away when he forgets the values of love and friendship that got him there in the first place. He learns the lesson too late to save what he initially built, but not too late to rebuild it better than ever. That’s the gist of the movie in two sentences. You’ve seen it before. But people don’t seek entertainment only looking for new things. If that was true, sports wouldn’t exist. No one really goes to a baseball or football game looking for something new, they go to watch the same basic structure play out over and over again across a three-hour game hoping to witness flawless execution of something they’ve seen a thousand times before. So too with movies, I can forgive repetition in plot if the film is well-executed. And within that criteria, I think Showman scores a touchdown.
It was a good choice to make Showman as a pop musical, though I would actually call this anthem pop. You know what an anthem is, or at least, you know it when you hear it. It’s a song that makes you want to stand up and sing and clap along, so long as you’re along for the ride. These are inclusive songs that rouse energy and passions, and are often calls to action. Think Katy Perry’s “Roar” or Beyoncé’s “Run the World.” Nearly every major piece in this film falls into that category. Many reviewers would disagree with me, and that gets into the controversy surrounding the artistic license taken with the film, but I appreciate the fact that the film seeks out inclusivity and prizes family, acceptance and equality over the class snobbery, racism and ostracism a more traditional or accurate film would have depicted.
The controversial aspect of the film isn’t hard to find. Many critics are latching onto the fact that, as a biopic of P.T. Barnum himself, this movie does a fairly terrible job at recreating the truth of his life. They’re certainly right about that. While Showman’s main message is about the love in created families, where Barnum’s band of misfits and outcasts comes together into the one place they truly belong, accepting people’s differences and indeed celebrating them, it’s a message removed from what got him his wealth and power to begin with. There’s no question that his troupe of freaks and the racial diversity therein would have been just as scandalous as the film implies, to say nothing of the anachronistic music throughout the film. And there’s the fact that Barnum himself profited from exploiting the outcasts in his circus. But it doesn’t just paper over the bad things. Barnum was also an infamous abolitionist who thundered against slavery on moral and religious terms for decades. None of that was included in the film. I was mostly okay with all of this. There needs to come a point where we can agree that, so long as we recognize that a film is ahistorical, we can make ahistorical films. People of color and women need, occasionally, to be featured in film depictions of the past as we wish they would have been, as they should have been, without losing sight of the reality. That is much of what Showman trades in, and as the ethos of the movie is that all that matters is entertaining and making people have a good time, many things are defensible in the name of occasional good fun.
Showman is fun and flies by so fast you’ll be sad when it’s over. I’ve spent a lot of time re-watching this special LIVE commercial the cast and 250 dancers performed over two minutes and thirty seconds of the song ”Come Alive,” which was a smashing success. It’s just a small piece of the fun that lies in store for the whole film. So go for the music and the dancing, the elaborate set pieces and fun period costumes, the solid acting of actors new and old. And if that fails, remember that reshoots were done under the direction of Jackman’s old director friend James Mangold. Wolverine: The Musical anyone?
