The Greatest Showman Review
Bursting into the cinemas and breaking box office records is ‘The Greatest Showman’. It may not be the Greatest show on earth but the cast have certainly worked extremely hard to make this movie have the thrill of adventure and make it’s mark.
The movie follows the true story of Pt Barnum, Phineas Taylor Barnum’s (Hugh Jackman) road to success when he manages to con the bank to lend him money to open his sideshow of wax figures, Barnum’s American Museum located on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in NYC, (which doesn’t have much success later in life). Following his failure of Barnum’s American Museum he goes on to promote his ‘oddities’, which was the equivalent to a modern day circus.
You would have thought this would be a documentary type film, but no. This Movie makes you literally sweat from your eyes. Starring the award winning theatre musical star, Hugh Jackman along with High School musical’s well known actor Zac Efron and Zendaya whom you may recognise from Spiderman Homecoming as ‘Michelle’. This upbeat, music filled movie is a MUST WATCH for all ages.
First time director Michael Gracey who is an Australian visual effects artist, does a wonderful job sending out the message to the audience ‘don’t judge people from how they look or their backgrounds and to follow your dreams.’ They obviously got only the best people to work on this movie so why not have an award winning songwriter as well? Benj Pasek who has worked on the songs for LaLa Land writes these amazingly catchy and gripping, modern songs for the Greatest Showman. The one and only Bill Condon who you may recognise from Dreamgirls or twilight writes the detailed script which is totally family friendly.
The amazing camera angles can make dancing of a rooftop seem high when realistically it’s a ledge as high as a park bench. The panning of the actors during the scenes are especially smooth with now jolty or bumpy landings.
Overall while most reviews say negative things about this movie the storyline is quite unrealistic when he grows up in the duration of 1 song and manages to marry the love of his life the odds if that are extremely high, plus its not that easy to con the bank, bite the biscuit and open a huge 5 story high ‘museum of great curiosities’ which is mostly empty except from the ground floor that is filled with wax figures and moth-bitten stuffed animals. While the story might not be completely logical I would give the movie 4 and a half stars.
