Post by StevePulaski on Dec 21, 2017 15:42:23 GMT -5
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Directed by: Michael Gracey
Directed by: Michael Gracey
Zac Efron (left) and Hugh Jackman take a drink in The Greatest Showman.
Rating: ★★½
About a month ago, I did a segment on my radio show regarding the current state of biopics in America. It came shortly after seeing LBJ, a painfully average and mostly disposable film about former president Lyndon B. Johnson; I questioned how much longer Hollywood could churn out roughly ten biopics a year when about two make big money, three break even, and five underperform or flat-out bomb.
With The Greatest Showman's $84 million budget, director Michael Gracey and screenwriters Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon (director of this year's Beauty and the Beast) propose an intriguing answer to my question: turn a biopic into a musical that functions more effectively as the latter in order to please a crowd. That's one way to go about the process, and to be fair, The Greatest Showman is quite frequently entertaining. As someone who finds myself forgetting even the melodies of most songs in contemporary musicals weeks after seeing them, I immediately ordered the soundtrack for Gracey's film after walking out of the theater. Not only was I taken by the terrific songs, but I had a strong feeling they'd hold up without the visual component. Time will tell on that note.
More on that later. The Greatest Showman revolves around the life of P. T. Barnum, played by Hugh Jackman. An ambitious entrepreneur with a biting urge to be a compelling showman as well, he marries the crush of his youth Charity (Michelle Williams) and promises her an eventful life. When that life begins to underwhelm thanks to Barnum being laid off from several jobs, leaving the futures of Charity and their two young girls in jeopardy, he hatches a last-minute idea to build a museum of curiosities such as wax figures and lifelike animal statues. That ho-hum plan then evolves into a spectacle showcasing unique-looking human beings and those who have been ousted of society thanks to deformities or eccentric physical attributes. Former pariahs such as a heavyset woman known as "The Bearded Lady" (Keala Settle), a dwarf (Sam Humphrey), a man covered in tattoos (Shannon Holtzapffel), and siblings who are trapeze artists (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and singer Zendaya) become the center of an inclusive show that honors their distinctly human qualities.
Eventually, Barnum convinces a novice playwright named Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron) to invest in his production. Barnum continues pouring thousands of dollars into his show thanks to generous loans that do their best to plead into his profit margins, but with the undying support of Charity and the cast, he feels he's doing right by everyone — at least until Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson), an opportunist singer nudges her way into Barnum's plan and tries to distract him from the real core of his mission.
The film is more-or-less split between being a musical and a straight-forward story regarding Barnum, and as stated, the latter winds up being the more engaging element with several infectious numbers earning their place in the limelight. The tone is appropriately set in the film's lively opening sequence where "The Greatest Show" makes the thesis of the film unambiguous. "The Other Side," performed by Jackman and Efron, is a tremendous tune — the best of the film — that's visual accompaniment is set in a bar, with the two men taking shot after shot of whiskey while Barnum tries to convince Carlyle to come aboard and invest in his circus. Then there is Settle's "This is Me," the unabashed cry for unapologetic individualism ala Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," which has her character taking centerstage and fearlessly becoming her own empowered force. There's not a bad number here and the sequences that come with them are choreographed well enough that they mostly distract from the lip-syncing.
The Greatest Showman was probably not conceived as an equitable push-pull between musical and biopic, for the pacing of the film suggests this film was either eviscerated in the editing room or gutted after the first-draft of the screenplay. So much in Barnum's life is either glossed over or done in montage, including his childhood, despite the opening scene and his initial encounter with Charity suggesting its greater narrative significance. This results in the present and deserved controversy that the film downplays the contemptible and manipulative elements of Barnum in favor of positioning him as the diversity saint of yesteryear. It's an issue that probably wouldn't arise had the film adopted a disproportionate emphasis on song-and-dance. The disjointed exposition does its part to really hinder the film, and that's a claim I don't make too often, being someone who craves development in characters and situations.
Jackman, who is routinely average outside of playing Wolverine, maintains the kind of screen-presence he's done a solid job of creating since the dawn of his career. One wonders what kind of performance he would've given had Bicks and Condon wrote a fiercer role with more energy and soul for him. While Dan Stevens in the comparably average The Man Who Invented Christmas found a way to channel some of Charles Dickens's manic writing and brainstorming tendencies in a physical sense, Jackman mostly resort to communicating his feelings by way of physicality and limber strides amidst crowded theatricalities. His best scenes outside of the musical interludes are alongside a chipper Michelle Williams, and in addition, Efron and Zendaya are the most notably impressive supporting characters in terms of their performance. Settle's voice inspires but her character never comes to life because Bicks and Condon don't find a place that it should. It might've interrupted the actual musical number "Come Alive."
The Greatest Showman is the oddball movie that fails when it tries to do what it thinks it should rather than following its heart and letting its head catch up. On that note, it compliments the better traits of Barnum. On another, it makes for a film that more people would probably enjoy than the film I, myself, might've rather seen (either one committed to music or one committed to developing Barnum). Yet if I lose and many win, that's all right with me too.
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Keala Settle, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Sam Humphrey, and Shannon Holtzapffel. Directed by: Michael Gracey.