The greatest conman?

Rating: 7/10 (7 October 2019)

Maybe it would've helped if I saw this during the 2017 Xmas season when it's easy to offer something to someone and they'd immediately consume it with glee and not during 2018's Typhoon season when the weather is dreary and everything takes a lot of effort to do. While it did lift up the mood on an otherwise gloomy Saturday night with it's blistering choreography, dazzling costumes and contemporary music, once the smoke clears and you go back to the story you kind of realize that you may have been conned a little.
Overall, the movie was good. My only critic is it's pacing. While I appreciate the hurried pace since I'm not really into musicals, they sacrificed a lot of things in exchange for keeping the audience's attention span. PT Burnam's life was full of ups and downs but we're only shown what they chose to show. While I agree a musical isn't necessarily for historical accuracy, but what I got from their summary was that he was a con man through and through. They didn't give me time to sympathize why he had to do what he did, they just pushed me into the next scene hoping I didn't notice that aspect of his life. There were a lot of missed opportunities as well between the characters of Philip and Anne, and even between PT and Jenny. Maybe because this is Michael Gracey's first film to direct, prior to this he was doing commercials (where he first met Hugh Jackman and how he remembered him years after and sent Michael the script) and supervising visual effects.
Taking all of those away and just the musical aspect of the show, this movie is an almost-winner. Choreography was near flawless (Zendaya reportedly did all her stunts), the music was purposefully made to sound ahead of it's time but some of the lyrics seemed off even if they were penned by Oscar award-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul of La La Land fame. Some lyrics seemed force and were out of tune which pretty much sound like most of the song written nowadays if you think about it.
If you've seen 2001's Mouline Rouge! by Baz Luhrmann, you can't help but compare and contrast and depending on who you listen to, this can mean as an insult or a compliment. But while the MR! is untouchable, The Greatest Showman has a lot of areas it can improve on and only time will tell if the future will be kinder to it.