The Greatest Showman (Musical Movie)

Finally saw this (because everyone wants my opinion over a year too late, right?). It’s not good at all, is it? It fails in every way as a musical. It’s just a dozen “Be yourself” cheesefests are knitted together by the least factually appropriate, most underdeveloped protagonist. The book is badly written, the song structure is all over the place, the songs have no relationship to the action. The marriage between book and songs is the biggest flaw in this lazy, lousy work; lyrics like “a zombie in a maze” or “when the bullets fly (from muskets?)” are pathetic anachronisms, whilst ideas integral to Barnum’s character – showmanship and self-confidence – never appear in the words themselves. “We are bursting through the barricades” – THAT’S THE WRONG MUSICAL!

Ultimately, this terrible musical is a low-end jukebox musical – Pasek & Paul wrote twenty-odd platitudinous pop bops, then strung them to whatever plot came their way (they more or less admitted, on Neil Brand, that they deliberately wrote stand-alone pops to get the gig). Find the word “circus” or “freak” in any of the songs – it’s about circus freaks, it should be easy! You can’t, can you? It’s a really bad musical.

HOWEVER… It’s not a musical. It’s clearly an MTV special. “This Is Me” is not “I Am What I Am”, it’s “I Don’t Give A f***”. And you know what? Swallow my pride. It’s actually a very good MTV special. There’s a reason an album of stadium-rock songs with messages like “I am who I’m meant to be” and “Our love will rewrite the stars” has bested Sgt Peppers – they’re quite good stadium-rock positivity anthems, music everyone likes with messages everyone needs but music no-one is making anymore*. Its precedents AREN’T Cy Colman et al, to which it embarrassingly pales in comparison, but Thriller and Trapped in the Closet, and, um, low bar to leap there, moving on…

*(I think it’s no coincidence that this and Bohemian Rhapsody – with those reviews, but with those standalone stadium-rock scenes – did well in the same year. It’s been a stellar year for diverse musicals (A Star is Born, Mamma Mia 2, Song of the Tree)*, but a better year for bombastic rock concerts (Bo-Rap, “Encore” A Star is Born, and this), and I think the lessons to be learnt from these movies aren’t cinematic, but musical. People will pay to see music they like, even in the cinema, whatever the cinematic quality. Film producers aside, music producers should leap on this.)

Through this prism, the direction is brilliant. The OTT choreography throws trapezes and elephant when it suits, and breakdancing when it doesn’t, with our televisual short attention spans never bored, often amazed. Better still, the camera moves with the motion as music videos have innovated, some surprising camera choreography zooming between time and place, fantasies and realities, in ways the stage can’t – fantastically, impossibly, entertainingly – with slo-mo and CGI emphasising the emotions as only cinema, or MTV, can. I truly believed in the Zac/Zendaya romance, despite the book giving nothing between them – the choreography and camerawork did the trick and filled those gaps. Slick, stylish and sexy – Michael Gracey is Busby Berkley meets Michael Bay – whilst this is just a bunch of music videos, they’re good music videos.

And is there a movie star today who’s as much a MOVIE STAR as Hugh?

(And if I’m honest… Much as I hate the phrase ‘guilty pleasure’ and the terrible book offers no pleasure… Oh boy, I hate this as a musical, so I hate myself for saying this, but I really do like this. I’ve been to amateur shows where they’ve opened with “The Greatest Show”, and forget Hugh opening the O2 with a dance-along, a stranger in a top hat gets me dancing along! These are perhaps the WORST songs for a Barnum musical – which is why this is a terrible musical – but they’re not bad songs in and of themselves – which is why it’s a successful music video.)

So there we go. As a movie musical I’d give it one-and-a-half stars, and would be hyperbolic enough to call it a) the worst book of a musical ever, and b) the worst mismatch between situation and songs in a musical ever. But to call it a movie musical is to misunderstand its genuine pleasures and its runaway success. The songs are fun, the visuals zippy, and the messages (though platitudinous) are positive. So what to make of it overall? Well, it’s so self-aware of its clumsy obviousness that its pretentious critic swallows his pride and says “I didn’t like your show, but…”. And however much I hate myself for falling into that trap, I didn’t like The Greatest Showman, but…

And they are quite good platitudinous songs. Perhaps that’s what people need now.

*When I say “A stellar year for musicals”… Seriously. Seriously. From America – A Star is Born; Greatest Showman; Bohemian Rhapsody; Poppins; 1/6 of Buster Scruggs. From our shores – Mamma Mia 2; Anna and the Apocalypse; Been So Long. From the Philippines – a four hour opera. From Portugal – a Ken Loach musical. From France – rockin' nuns do Joan of Arc. From Russia – fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa. From Kyrgyzstan – the FIRST EVER Kyrgyzstani musical, and a bloody masterpiece to boot!

Plus, whether the reprises of Renee Fleming and Townes van Zandt in Three Billboards or Baby Driver’s choreography, the actual Fred-and-Ginger number in Shape of Water, or the Citizen Kane of musical numbers in a non-musical, more and more films seem to be using the high emotions of the musical number in non-musical films, and getting away with it!

So has there been a time for movie musicals since their golden age like there is now?

And maybe not a movie musical, but the best movie of the year was a musical movie: