A Showy, Forgettable CG Musical

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2017)

The Greatest Showman is a flashy biopic of circus pioneer PT Barnum. Unfortunately, PT Barnum gets the Hollywood treatment and it is a shallow movie that portrays Barnum as a champion of the downtrodden just as much as the profiteer that he was. Hugh Jackman's version of Barnum would never say "There's a sucker born every minute."
Of even greater disappointment was the music. The writers of La La Land's incredible soundtrack follow it up with a disappointing set of songs that all sound the same. If you shuffled the songs around in this movie, I'm not sure anyone would really notice. The only song I can remember much of is The Greatest Show, and that's just because they repeatedly come back to it. Even Golden Globe nominated This Is Me sounds like the rest of them. It was also clear that for the most part the actors are not the ones singing, and those that are recorded in a studio and then lip synced, which while understandable, should not be noticeable.
There is a solid cast and they all do fine, particularly Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson. The dance numbers definitely feel like they are from a 60s musical like West Side Story or Mary Poppins rather than a modern musical. It is also shot and constructed reasonably well, but it just not gripping.