Good Choreography but Sloppy Story

Rating: 6/10 (24 December 2017)

A musical movie about P.T. Barnum told with all great reverence to P.T. Barnum, featuring P.T. Barnum's Museum of Curiosities...so why not just make "Barnum" the stage musical? The answer to that question seems to be because then they couldn't get the guys from La La Land to do the music; fair enough. But if director Michael Gracey and screenwriter Jenny Bicks were set on custom making this celebration of glitz, chicanery and humbug they could have at least opted for a little more connective tissue.
The Greatest Showman is a movie in moments, many of them great many more of them flaccid and empty. We're whisked through P.T.'s (Jackman) impoverished childhood in a single bound before settling on his happy marriage with wife Charity (Williams), and his two daughters (Johnson and Seely) who have grown to see their father as a hero. Tired of working to scrounge up a meager living, Barnum embarks on a risky entertainment venture and in due time, recruits his circus of curiosities and freaks.
From that point on, the film's narrative relies heavily on its skin-deep celebration of acceptance and diversity. This is while it chugs along through Barnum's life from his start as a full-time huckster, to his falling out with Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (Ferguson). And while it would have been nice to say that the movie does a good job of linking theme with plot, I'm sorry to say none of it becomes a cohesive whole.
This is not entirely the fault of the filmmakers. I mean turning P.T. Barnum's life into a celebration of kindness and humanity is like using William 'Boss' Tweed as a symbol for New York pride. This film being a musical, I was not expecting something exacting, but I was expecting at the very least a keen acknowledgement that the legacy of P.T. Barnum isn't all razzle-dazzle. Yet this film makes him out to look like a saint; a man of untold potential who uses "truthful hyperbole" to provide for his loving family - A man of conviction, of love and of just wanting to put a smile on your face.
Framed in virtually any other way, Barnum would be the villain - enticing his young protégé Phillip (Efron) to "live a little," and abandon his family to come join the circus. Belittling a theater critic with insults masquerading as flaccid, fortune cookie, self-help wisdom and enticing circus "freaks" to stand out and express themselves while closing the door on them the moment he's among the rich and famous. The film's show-stopping tune "This is Me" takes place at this moment but because the film is too scared to make its hero anything more complicated than a fancily folded cocktail napkin, the moment feels like the side characters are just letting off steam.
What ultimately saves this movie from being a complete waste of a Saturday night is the choreography. Every poppy show tune and love ballad brings with it entire body shots of twirling, leaping perfection, conjuring memories of the physical feats of the cast of West Side Story (1961). Not satisfied with the traditional, the film continues to build its momentum with incredibly fancy footwork and some truly death defying trapeze choreography on the part of Zendaya and Zac Efron.
There's imagination in the frame and a lot of it, but largely due to the film's complete inability to marry subject with tone, The Greatest Showman is far from great. Rather than being a worthy successor to Moulin Rouge! (2001) this picture winds up feeling like Newsies (1992) without a Crutchy. And let's face it; the only thing we really remember about that movie was there was a character named Crutchy.