All Style No Substance

Rating: 6/10 (5 May 2018)

I really wanted to like this movie. I'd heard from friends who told me it was their favourite movie ever! The number of 10/10 reviews on this website were enough to get me excited.
However, what a mighty letdown. For once the critics git it right. This was a movie that wanted to be a musical masterpiece, but instead turned up with songs that were simply painted by numbers, nothing original here. I was hoping for another La La Land, but instead got High School Musical in a tent!
Cringingly melodramatic set pieces designed to manipulate the viewer into empathising with its characters, The Greatest Showman pretends to be a solid ode to showbusiness, but offers up no real depth at all. Poor old Hugh Jackman tried, but with the script and music he was stuck with, and the way the musical pieces were introduced within the action, it was just too twee for even he to overcome.
From a cinematography point of view, the production values were high, but that was it. Very little insight into any of the cutout characters, poor delivery of the musical component which never matched the period setting, manipulative set pieces designed to tell a character's backstory quickly without spending any time to pull away the layers,... OMG this was cynical moneygrabbing filmmaking 101.
Yeah, I really wanted to like this movie. But what I got was a glitzy, noisy, pseudo jolly but ultimately hollow rendition of a Hollywood musical. Even the ending was contrived and rushed.
Go and see a real musical, like La La Land or Nine... they had style too, but importantly they also possessed substance. Much like Barnum's business model, The Greatest Showman movie is a fake... "people know they are seeing a fake, but they'll still come!" I'm sad, but it's a fact.