Hip Hop Meets Marxist Cliches

Rating: 3/10 (31 January 2018)

The art of the musical has evolved wonderfully--but you wouldn't know it by watching The Greatest Showman." People don't just start singing mid-sentence! The director needed to check out Chicago and Moulin Rouge. There has to be a point to a song. And speaking of songs, this is the most abrasive collection of virtue-signaling, grating, talentless and eye-rolling noise you will ever find. These songs are laughably bad and tuneless and unmemorable. Leaving a musical, one should be humming the music. You can't, however, hum noise, which these songs are. The Marxist class warfare trope starts early when a boy Barnum gets slapped by, of course, the rich, evil white guy. And the social justice warrior nonsense persists throughout. The music is bad extraordinarily bad, but the dancing is even worse--not because it wasn't performed well--it was. It is bad because it is exhaustingly hyperkinetic and, worse, inappropriate for a movie set in an historical period. Hip hop is fine for a music video, but it's jarring here. On the plus side, both Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron cut fine manly figures as ringmasters, and much of the art direction and cinematography are excellent. Too bad they're wasted on a bunch of tripe.