The art of promotion

Rating: 8/10 (13 May 2018)

It's ironic that this musical celebration of the life of Phineas Taylor Barnum comes
out just when the last tangible legacy of his life comes to an end. The plot of
The Greatest Showman ends just when Barnum gets the idea that he just needs
a large tent to house his attractions. We never see Barnum&Bailey's circus come
to fruition, we never even meet James P. Bailey in this film.. Their circus merged
with that of the Ringling family and it was Ringling Brothers&Barnum&Bailey
circus that traveled the world for over a century. Last year the troupe finally
broke up as the circus became an institution confined to history. Still Phineas
Taylor Barnum is still a name that set a standard for promotion.
The Greatest Showman looks a whole lot like in style and substance with the
Cole Porter tribute film It's DeLovely. But that film had a library of a song catalog to score that film from its subject. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul wrote the songs for The Greatest Showman and This Is Me gained an Oscar nomination for Best Song, one of the very few now written for that rarest of
film lately, the original screen musical.
A lot of people have brought P.T. Barnum to the screen and Hugh Jackman in
his performance joins such folks as Wallace Beery, Burt Lancaster, and Michael
Crawford among others. Jackman doesn't take a back seat to any of these.
Two refugees from the Disney Studio, Zac Efron and Zendaya have great parts
to exhibit their musical talents. Rebecca Ferguson plays The Swedish Nightingale Jenny Lind who represented Barnum's successful bid for respectability. She has a nice song to sing dubbed by Loren Allred in Never
Enough. But it might have been wiser and more accurate to have gotten some
soprano to sing a familiar public domain aria instead. What you see here is
most definitely not an authentic Jenny Lind.
There's no more Scudder's Museum where Barnum exhibited his sideshow acts.
Jenny Lind arrived too soon for her voice to be captured on Mr. Edison's new
phonograph, and now the circus is of the past. But The Greatest Showman is
still quite a tribute to the one who really invented the concept of show business, P.T. Barnum.