The greatest show on Earth?
Hugh must be joking!
Awards season is a strange and mysterious time, as the imminent release of The Greatest Showman makes clear. In Ireland, it is due to be released in January, while in the UK it comes out on St Stephen’s Day, just a week or so later than in the United States. And yet it arrives in cinemas already garlanded with no less than three Golden Globe nominations – Best Musical or Comedy, Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and Best Original Song.
This sort of thing is not unprecedented by any means. It’s not difficult for a distributor to lay on a timely series of special screenings for, in this case, the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to whip up a bit of positive hullaballoo and suddenly the nominations are flowing. But when it does happen, it always strikes me as a bit odd that the nominations have arrived before box offices have even opened, critical response been posted and word-of-mouth begun to spread. I mention all this because when I actually got to see The Greatest Showman I was somewhat underwhelmed. Cross Frozen with Moulin Rouge (another musical to blend contemporary songs with a period story) and you’d end up with something definitely better than this. That’s not to say it’s a disaster. If you want something undemanding and sort of familyfriendly, and you like musicals, this will fill a couple of hours between Christmas and New Year.
But I can’t see this potted retelling of the life and times of the American circus entrepreneur PT Barnum – the man who some say invented showbusiness and is played here by Hugh Jackman – having much of a shelf-life. Especially as the highly successful Broadway musical, Barnum, has been covering the same ground for almost 40 years. What might just prove me wrong, however, is that the new film does feature songs by the Oscar-winning, Tony-winning, hotter-than-hot songwriting duo Pasek and Paul. Last year, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul won both the Oscar and the Golden Globe for the sublime City Of Stars from La La Land, and their songs are certainly the best things about the new film. This Is Me is the one that is beginning to pick up nominations and certainly, as far as the Golden Globes are concerned, must be the film’s best chance of winning. But in every other respect The Greatest Showman mildly disappoints, a fact that
becomes understandable once you discover that visual-effects-specialist-turned-director Michael Gracey has never made a film before. You can see why he might have been chosen – a film that essentially has to recreate both 19th-century New York and the magic of the circus is obviously heavy on visual effects – but the vital underlying story is so slight.
A tailor’s son, Barnum grows up in Connecticut, marries his childhood sweetheart, Charity, gambles everything when he buys Scudder’s American Museum in New York, fills it with ‘freaks’ and curiosities, gets romantically distracted by the beautiful Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind… I could go on but, tellingly, not much.
Jackman, who is 50 next year and a touch too old to convince totally, certainly anchors the show but doesn’t set the world alight as he did in Les Mis. Elsewhere, Michelle Williams struggles with the underwritten part of Charity, while Rebecca Ferguson fares little better as the attractive but bland Lind. The only performer to emerge with her reputation enhanced is the young Californian actress Zendaya, as the pink-haired trapeze artist who catches the eye of Barnum’s business partner, Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). Can love overcome the racial divide in 1850s New York? I’m not telling but look out for the musical trapeze number that, along with a barnstorming opening, is one of the undeniable highlights.
There’s no doubt the freak-show aspect of the story will be problematic for modern audiences. But this was never going to be the sort of show where unpleasant truths would get in the way of pretty tunes. Shame.