The Greatest Showman Review (Film, 2017)
I know when I was growing up, going to the circus was a big deal. There was something magical about getting a snow cone and some popcorn, sitting in the arena, and watching as people and animals began to dance through and above the three rings in the playing space. I also am old enough that I have horrific nightmares about such stellar attractions as a man wrestling an alligator (a big old why of a spectacle), a real life unicorn (poor Lancelot and his brethren were goats that received a surgical implant in their skull; I saw one of the poor ones that actually was incapable of standing on their own because of brain damage), and a rare Black Rhino (so rare that my performance, like many performances on that tour, saw the poor creature unable to leave his cage because he wasn’t “cooperating”). Suffice it to say that my jaded experience in the 80s made me a Disney on Ice kid, not a gawk at the poor suffering animals in the circus kid. It would take many more years before the movement finally took off to ban the training of exotic animals for traveling circuses. At least we stopped exploiting disabled people after only a few decades with the side show. Small victories?
All of this sets up my expectations for The Greatest Showman. I know a lot about P.T. Barnum. I was obsessed with the Barnum musical growing up and read many books on his life and the history of his circus. It should come as no surprise that a man who is quoted as saying “there is a sucker born every minute” is not a great person. That’s the kindest way I can say that I am tired of the glorification of a truly awful, manipulative, exploitative human being whose only concern was making money at the cost of human and animal safety and happiness.
Unsurprisingly, the newest musical incarnation of his life story casts him once again as a hero. We follow his rise out of poverty as a young orphan to the glorious conman who launched over a century of dangerous, exploitative entertainment with the circus. Barnum’s family is put front and center, though the film falls headfirst into one of the myths that is actually not based in fact. His marriage faced no challenges from the appearance of opera singer Jenny Lind in their lives. She was concerned with raising money for her various school charity programs and was one of the few people to out negotiate Barnum when it came to earning money.
Still, the timeline is intentionally confused to avoid dealing with the actual nastiness of Barnum’s personal life. After Charity’s death in 1873, he married a woman 40 years younger than him, the daughter of one of his closest friends. For those keeping track of the math, his second wife was four years younger than his youngest daughter. Gross.
The circus also did not start until 1970 when his children were all adults. He was focused on traveling shows and appearances with acts like the world’s shortest man (General Tom Thumb) and touring Native American performers throughout Europe, paying them to do their sacred dances and rituals at various palaces. The sideshow performers were largely imported from his European tours, especially once he broke through to the larger pool of trained acrobats and dancers in Russia. That’s the kind way of saying he hired a lot of performers at incredibly low rates to be the face of his traveling collection of wax figures, automatons, and whatever other prestigious performers he could rope into an unfair contract.
The Greatest Showman hints at how awful Barnum is, but refuse to cast him as anything other than a pristine hero fighting for his dreams. There’s a particularly shocking scene leading to the breakout anthem “This Is Me” that actually made my jaw drop. They set this scene on the same night as Jenny Lind’s debut in America. Barnum’s performers are forced to watch from standing room only in the back of the theatre. They are excited to meet their new comrade at the reception in the lobby. Barnum himself kicks them out and basically says no one will pay to see their show if the walk around and show their faces for free. Yike. Singular. Awful.
Are there any redeeming factors in The Greatest Showman. Sure. We get high quality performance footage of Keala Settle (the Bearded Woman) singing. Settle is one of the truly great Broadway singers of our time and, for me, the main reason to watch this film. Some of the songs are quite lovely. Again, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are the new “it” composers on Broadway and they write very clever contemporary theatre scores. I’d argue all of their other work is better than this (especially James and the Giant Peach and A Christmas Story), but the songs in this film are crowd pleasers. Zendaya (as a trapeze artist) and Zac Efron (as Phillip Carlye, Barnum’s principle investor and eventual business partner) give great performances in the few moments where the camera isn’t contractually obligated to stare at Hugh Jackman.
Perhaps the greatest mistake in The Greatest Showman is letting Hugh Jackman sing, barely audibly, in the lowest part of his range for almost the entire film. Jackman is a wonderful musical theatre performer. Anyone who saw him live in The Boy from Oz can attest to his skills as a song and dance man. He is a trained baritone who moves well. Why they wrote Barnum as a whispering hard rock bass is something I will never understand. He’s also singing patter songs in that register, so you can barely understand any of the words in songs like “The Greatest Show” and “Come Alive.”
I could keep dragging The Greatest Show for many more paragraphs. The effects are awful. There’s this poor character who is supposed to be a man with four legs and two of his legs are just stuffed pant legs that hang lifelessly from his waist. The costumes are made of incredibly cheap, shiny fabric that is covered in wrinkles by the end of every dance scene.
Most distracting of all is this truly awful digitally enhanced slow motion focus effect where the singers mouths stay in time but the world seems to stop around them. It looks like a poorly rendered video game in these moments. Those effects are worse than Cats before the graphics patch.
There are also constant continuity errors with ensemble members appearing and disappearing within shots. The crowds of the circus are always the same dozen or so people in closeup with no characterization other than “woman with hat” or “child with popcorn” or “racist NYer.” None of the characters who any growth or change beyond “I’m sad and alone” becoming “I have a family of performers now, yay me!”
Yes, there is a subplot about interracial relationships. No, I will not be addressing it at this time. Just know that they REALLY want you to believe P.T. Barnum is a great man for hiring black performers for his circus. If you take the film at face value, the men determined to destroy the circus are fine with every performer except for two black trapeze artists. It’s…it’s a choice.
Here’s the thing. The Greatest Showman is ultimately a puff piece of bright colors and hummable tunes. It drew a massive audience of fans and is still adored by children. The amount of students I have who want to learn music from the film or act out scenes from script blows my mind. I know growing up that I liked some truly awful movie musicals. Decades later, I’m working in theatre with a greater understanding of the craft and form of the musical.
If The Greatest Showman makes people happy, that’s great. I’m not one of them. I’m past the point of glossing over history in the service of a few good tunes. All I can do is explain my problems with the film and let you make your own choice of what to do with them. Would I tell a child the film is awful? Absolutely not. I am kind and careful with my words so as to not discourage their interest in learning about musicals. Not everyone’s sense of wonder about the circus was destroyed by sad goats and missing animals. Have fun singing along to The Greatest Showman if that’s what makes you happy.
The Greatest Showman is available to rent or purchase on all digital platforms. It will be available on Disney + starting 14 August in the US.
