So, as per usual, I knew little about this film. I just knew it was a musical, it had Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron in it and that was basically it. I don’t think I’d even seen a trailer. Or maybe I did. I think I knew it was about dreamers, too and as soon as I learned it was at least somewhat biographical (about circus director/entertainer P. T. Barnum, in case you were wondering) and set in the good old days of the 19th century in the US, I was already in favour of it.
Well. As I had been with La La Land, until that turned out to be pretentious and unbearable, heaped with praise that in my eyes it did not deserve.
As for this movie, everybody’s actually been comparing it to La La Land and I am, too, although my comparison may not be as favourable as everyone else’s, as not only did the aforementioned LLL disappoint, but this did, too. Well, perhaps not so much disappoint, as leave me with a very hollow feeling, like eating icing without the cake. I mean, obviously the icing is the best part but you need to balance out the icing with the cake or else it’s just… bland, oh irony. All sugary and sweet but in the end you feel sick and empty.
As for comparisons to LLL, apparently they had the same lyricists but honestly I couldn’t tell. Showman is very “poppy” and I didn’t like that at all but more about that in a minute. Both of the movies are pretentious and shallow and the dreamers are not much of struggling dark horses, since everything good just happens to them. Sure, PT and Seb work on their craft but they don’t fall on too many hardships, is all, or at least they’re shown in a way where it doesn’t really matter that they fall on them.
Another thing those two movies share is quite present cinematography, let’s say. LLL had very vivid colours and I think that played a huge part in the overall reception of the film. With Showman the colours are vivid as well but it’s a little different. I think I’d have to compare it to another recent movie (which I also disliked, fancy that, but not because of the cinematography necessarily) – Beauty and the Beast (2017). Both that and Showman seemed to rely on CGI or at least colour enhancing filters or something so much that it made the scenes appear hyperrealistic to the point of artificial. And that’s not a good thing.
In one of the beginning scenes, when we see PT in his early youth as he leads a young Charity to an abandoned and overgrown mansion they would one day own, the images are quite magnificent. The light hits all of the foliage in the right spots, creating dancing shimmers of dust and long shadows on the floors… and it takes you right out of the movie, or at least it did that for me. It’s too pretty, too picturesque, too perfect. Not to mention the kids walking around, singing, and totally behaving like adults (which they wouldn’t at that age but whatever). It’s the whole icing/cake thing all over again – when in a regular movie you suddenly get a gorgeous, perhaps even enhanced shot that is timed and placed perfectly it’s sweet and it takes the whole viewing experience to another level – but in this one every shot tried to be like that. And you can’t have too much eye-candy (hehe) or else it all looks the same, not leaving much of an impression after a while. Personally, I also started really noticing that I was watching a movie, which I dislike because that’s not what I go to the movies for (ironically).
Again, this doesn’t mean that all movies have to be realistic in order to be believable but you do have to find some sort of balance and this movie definitely didn’t.
All of this sweetness overdose also made this movie feel incredibly long. It required you to be swept up all the time, be amazed, bedazzled and that’s too much as well. You have to let the audience breathe a little, let them quiet down after an emotional high, whether positive or negative. Balance, again. When all you do is shove excitement down someone’s throat, at some point they won’t be able to take it anymore.
But it’s easy, isn’t it? When you blind people with things that are overly processed and easy to digest, they will consume them. They will indulge, because that’s what people do, and they’ll ask for seconds. They’ll rave about how great it felt even though it left quite a bit of nothingness, which they have to fill sooner or later with the next dose.
Yes, I am comparing this musical to sugar addiction. I mean, I already compared it to cake, so “if you’re gonna get hung for stealing a sheep, you might as well fuck it as well”, as Ewan McGregor so poignantly put it in the interview he did with Stephen Colbert I watched today.
So, not many positives there so far. But the music’s gonna save it, right? The music was awesome (those La La Land lyricists tho, amirite?), wasn’t it?
Well…
It’s easy listening, is all. Which isn’t bad. But they try to make it come off as these deep ventures into the human condition. And that’s just pretentious.
But damn, some of it is really catchy. Easy. Processed.
Sugar.
Anyway, here’s a breakdown of all the songs that I actually had an opinion on (so, most of them):
- “The Greatest Show” – in short, very Top 40. Which is, again, alright, but not what I had imagined. Also, Hugh Jackman doesn’t sound right here. I mean maybe it’s because I’m used to hearing his voice in more traditional musical numbers but I just don’t feel like the pop scene is really for him.
- “A Million Dreams” – fine, again, easy to listen to, but very reminiscent of Smash season 2 (ouch, some might think). The hook of a “Million Dreams” sounds suspiciously similar to the hook of “Rewrite This Story”. Perhaps this is just my perception but even in the cinema I expected them to sing those lyrics (ironically enough – also the same writers/composers. Maybe someone reached into the wrong draft drawer, there?).
- “Come Alive” – at least the previous two songs were consistent in style because, as fun as this song is, the soundtrack really does start sounding like a mixed bag from here on. This song especially reminds of the more uplifting music of Michael Jackson, specifically with the chorus, its melody and vigorous group clapping.
- “The Other Side” – the equivalent of “I don’t dance” from High School Musical 2 (you really didn’t expect me not to tap into that well, did you?), is a fun song, set in a bar, which means – country! Right? Well, at least country-ish. As country as a pop-musical can go.
- “Never Enough” – the only actual “musical” musical number in this film but it’s still very poppy and like a cheap ballad that the Glee kids would produce (or have produced for them, rather – “Get It Right”, anyone?) but since they’re kids, the lyricists had to bust out the less complex song and apparently they did so in Showman, too.
- “This Is Me” – now, here’s the kicker. Again, Top 40, again poppy and easy, filled with all the “overcoming adversity” clichés one would expect, with all its dusts, drums, bullets, cuttings-down and such. But it’s nominated for a Golden Globe and will quite probably win an Oscar. And not without reason. It’s terribly addictive. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been listening to it on repeat myself. The whole score, in fact. But is it really as good as everybody says? Or is it just so sweet and easy that we can’t help but listen to it?
- “Rewrite The Stars” and the rest of the album – there’s nothing much I can add here, I’d just be repeating myself. Not to mention that the rest of the songs kind of blend together and despite having listened to the album several times now I still couldn’t tell what the last few songs sounded like exactly.
It’s just too much. Too much pizzazz, too much sparkle, too much sugar. Too much in general. And yet, I got hooked, not unlike with sugar. That’s bad; we shouldn’t get addicted to either.
Well, not to touch on ongoing dramas surrounding online content and it’s boundaries *cough cough Logan Paul cough cough* but it seems we already have become addicted to easy entertainment. That’s why they keep making it, after all. Always the next spectacle, always the next thrill. And The Greatest Showman really embodies that.
As for the plot itself, there’s really not much to say. You know what’s gonna happen right from the start, the fictional love story between Zac Efron and Zendaya is there to boost viewership I suppose (nobody wants a love story between Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams, right? Well, they didn’t have any meaningful conflict, and they’re not as young and attractive anymore (to the majority) as Zac and Zen, so there goes I suppose; also, it’s not such a fictional love story for Zac it seems, as he seems quite enamored with his co-star in all of the interviews) and in the end everybody gets everything they ever wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I love these kinds of endings, they just need to be earned in order to mean anything.
Apart from that of course they very much strayed from the original story, as far as I gather the real Barnum was actually a racist jackass but since the whole musical is more like a fairy tale then a biopic, or anything else for that matter, I didn’t really mind.
What I did mind, however, and what came across a bit in the acting but especially in the interviews was Hugh Jackman and his attitude towards the film. From what I understand this has been his lovechild for almost a decade and he really wanted for people to love it as much as he did (having put most of his Wolverine money into it, apparently). And him as the Greatest Showman, of course. And it just shows. He’s trying too hard. It makes it tough to criticize this movie, I suppose especially in front of him, because he’s lost touch with reality when it comes to it. And it made it worse in my opinion. Because the potential is there – he just couldn’t see the trees for the forest anymore, as they like to say around here. He always compares P. T. Barnum to “an Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs” and perhaps he’s right but the manic passion in his eyes doesn’t make a good, or believable impression.
To sum up, this was a movie that was very easy to consume, so easy in fact that it got tiring. Hugh Jackman went in over his head on this one and now he tries to sell it as this amazing, grand experience, which it really isn’t. It’s simply a blown out of proportions, heavily processed pop musical that people shove right down their throats in hopes of getting something special out of it, which they won’t. Shame on them for making it but shame on us for wanting it, over-indulgent children that we are.
But the next fix is coming soon, and this one will have been well forgotten by then.
Outside Max 