Review of The Greatest Showman (2017) by Lanceeyy — 19 Feb 2018

"There's a sucker born every minute.".

The Greatest Showman is, for the most part, good, but it is by no means "great". I came into this movie hoping to be blown away (my friends all gave this moving glowing reviews). Sadly, that is not the case. Although, I did enjoy this movie, what I watched feels like an entirely different movie from what my friends watched. With that, let's talk about what I don't like about this movie.

The movie was entirely forgettable, story-wise, at least. The characters did not shine through at all. The carnies are, ironically, forgettable. I wish they gave these characters more exposition. I hoped that they would be talked about more. Their backstories more elaborate. But, no. By the end of the movie, there were more carnies than ever, and I did not know anyone of them. It's a shame because the movie wants you to sympathize with these people, about being different, yet we don't know who they really are. We don't get to know any of them. The movie is, for the most part, centered on Hugh Jackman. I get it. I know the movie isn't called The Greatest Carnies, but still. Choreography was mediocre. There wasn't anything special about the choreography at all. Nothing new we've seen from previous musicals. Maybe even a downgrade. The songs at least were pretty good and catchy that it kind of diverted attention away from the bland choreography. The parts that I hated were the God-awful CGI. There was one scene in particular, near the end of the movie where I just thought: "Geez. Really guys?". The CGI was so bad, I couldn't believe I was watching that in 2018. Taking all this into consideration, I did have a good time with this movie. It's such a happy-fun time kind of movie. If you just wanna watch a musical and have fun, it's worth a one-time viewing, at least. Although, there were a lot of things that I didn't like with this movie, overall, I did have a good time. The songs were the Hail Mary pass, but did they make it? For the most part, yes.