Review of The Greatest Showman (2017) by Charlie P — 29 Mar 2018

Desperate to give his wife (Michelle Williams) and daughters a better life for themselves, the ambitious showman P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) buys a large museum in New York and hires a group of performers that suffer from physical deformities or have unique abilities to form an act that would eventually lead to the birth of the longest-running show in history.

The life of the contraversional entertainment pioneer and the founder of the recently closed down Barnum and Bailey Circus, P.T. Barnum, is not a subject one would consider would translate well to a Broadway-style musical crowd-pleaser.

Seeing how Barnum's life has already been adapted to a long-running stage show already with Barnum running since 1980, one would think that the songwriters of La La Land, Benji Pasek and Justin Paul would find it hard to make this adaptation stand out. Thankfully, their musical numbers are rightfully show-stopping in their own right, with Keala Settle's "This is Me" and a majority of the ensemble musical numbers looking extremely well filmed and choreographed for Michael Gracey's directorial debut.

However much like other musicals that revolve around rewriting historical figures such as Disney's Pocahontas and Don Bluth's Anastasia , The Greatest Showman does not work as a biopic as much of Barnum's actions throughout this film are highly romanticised and a lot of his more negative traits as a showman such as the debate over the ethics of his exploitation of his acts are downplayed highly.

However, like those two films, if one is willing to seperate fantasy from reality, The Greatest Showman, while not as memorable as La La Land, is an overall crowd-pleasing experience that ends 2017 on a high note.