The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman was released Dec. 20, 2017.
There’s more to Hugh Jackman than steel retractable claws. Aside from Wolverine, the Australian actor is known for playing Jean Valjean in Les Misérables and, by all accounts, he loves to sing. We hear him in The Greatest Showman, a musical conjured from the life of P.T. Barnum. He plays ringmaster Barnum himself, depicted in Michael Gracey’s directorial debut as a visionary—the Thomas Edison of humbug as well as the champion of the oppressed in the form of the “freaks” he exploits and puts in his circus.
Gracey directs with snap and crackle through an imaginatively visualized kinetic, choreographed display of razzmatazz. Too bad the songs by La La Land’s Justin Paul and Benj Pasek are no better than mediocre schmaltz. Loosely moored to history, much like the real Barnum’s flimsy ties to factuality, The Greatest Showman proposes Barnum’s hokum as an alternative to the brutally enforced, rule-bound society of 19th-century America, but is better at showing how audiences will flock to a distracting spectacle in which they only half believe. The Greatest Showman ought to be Donald Trump’s favorite film of 2017.
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