The Great­est Showman

Hugh Jack­man is a fas­ci­nat­ing movie star. Play­ing a magi­cian bet­ter skilled at win­dow dress­ing than at actu­al mag­ic in Christo­pher Nolan’s The Pres­tige, but also a raw, uncom­pro­mis­ing and vio­lent mutant in the X‑Men fran­chise, he’s demon­strat­ed his abil­i­ty to shift between overt show­man­ship and the type of sub­tle per­for­mance that is more usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Good Act­ing. Hol­ly­wood was quick to notice his taste for the­atrics and soon let him host award shows with grandiose musi­cal num­bers to cel­e­brate the most sophis­ti­cat­ed performances.

The Great­est Show­man is only the log­i­cal pro­gres­sion for a man so obsessed with the art of the stage, and its title should hope­ful­ly earn Jack­man a new nick­name. A high­ly glam­or­ised ver­sion of the life sto­ry of PT Bar­num – the man who made the cir­cus a lucra­tive busi­ness in Amer­i­ca and had a unique flair for mar­ket­ing – Jackman’s pet project deserves to become a Christ­mas clas­sic. The Great­est Showman’s severe roman­ti­cism and ridicu­lous but affect­ing enthu­si­asm make it irre­sistibly life-affirming.

“Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve wait­ed for…” Jack­man mut­ters in the film’s bom­bas­tic, Chica­go-esque open­ing sequence. It is with this aston­ish­ing­ly high-ener­gy and hilar­i­ous­ly con­fi­dent song that The Great­est Show­man sets its height­ened and opti­mistic tone, for this degree of inten­si­ty and bold assur­ance rarely fal­ters for the remain­der of the film: Jack­man means it all.

As a child, Bar­num already want­ed to cre­ate spec­ta­cles and be accom­pa­nied on his jour­ney by Char­i­ty (Sky­lar Dunn, then Michelle Williams), the cute daugh­ter of one of his tai­lor dad’s clients, a rich man with noth­ing but con­tempt for the Bar­nums’ pover­ty. It is through a song that the film takes us through these ​“Mil­lion Dreams” and unto his and Charity’s adult­hood, with Jackman’s bari­tone tak­ing over from a young child with an angel­ic voice mid­way through the num­ber, and Michelle Williams join­ing in. Whether the syrupy tunes (penned by the duo behind La La Land​’s songs) annoy or mes­merise, they car­ry the film through as prop­er nar­ra­tive devices, rather than tacked on flour­ish­es, which shows an impres­sive and touch­ing lev­el of genre-spe­cif­ic ded­i­ca­tion from Jack­man and direc­tor Michael Gracey.

High­light­ing the clas­si­cal melo­dra­mat­ic themes of ambi­tion, tri­umphant love and human­ism, the song and dance num­bers help smooth out the less attrac­tive aspects of Barnum’s sto­ry. His employ­ing of peo­ple with phys­i­cal anom­alies for his freak show is turned into an enlight­ened altru­is­tic enter­prise with care­ful­ly cho­sen lines (“Peo­ple won’t laugh, they’ll salute!”) and rous­ing anachro­nis­tic Broad­way-pop tunes about indi­vid­u­al­i­ty; ​‘Come Alive’ sounds like Rob­bie Williams, while ​‘This is Me’ longs to be a pop sin­ga­long showstopper.

Barnum’s nar­ra­tive of self-improve­ment inter­twines with these char­i­ta­ble ambi­tions; his arc becomes as much about learn­ing to tru­ly respect his unique employ­ees and friends as enfold­ing them in his suc­cess. As forced, ahis­tor­i­cal and disin­gen­u­ous as this devel­op­ment may be, it speaks to a degree of self-aware­ness that is very much welcome.

As its title sug­gests, the film undoubt­ed­ly func­tions bet­ter as a love-let­ter to enter­tain­ment than to diver­si­ty. Each musi­cal num­ber is in itself an emo­tion­al roller-coast­er, mov­ing through extremes of hap­pi­ness and sor­row at exhil­a­rat­ing and often hilar­i­ous speed: it seems as though the char­ac­ters tru­ly need to break into songs to let out all the strong feel­ings sim­mer­ing inside them. Wit­ness­ing such star actors as Michelle Williams and Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son devote them­selves to such overblown sen­ti­men­tal­ism and vocal acro­bat­ics feels like a Christ­mas mir­a­cle, a deli­cious mince pie that may be a bit too sweet but remains delec­table nonethe­less. (Fer­gu­son might be the only cast mem­ber to be dubbed, but her theme song is a dif­fi­cult Opera-via-Adele tune and she does sing its tear­ful reprise with flab­ber­gast­ing extravagance).

The most enjoy­able per­for­mances remain those deliv­ered by the actu­al show­peo­ple: Zac Efron and Zen­daya, both with a back­ground in song and dance, play the Romeo and Juli­et of this sto­ry with the phys­i­cal­i­ty of true acro­bats. Their high-fly­ing duet is per­haps the most affect­ing num­ber, even though their romance often appears as a (failed) attempt at avoid­ing any homo­erot­ic ten­sion between Efron’s Philip Car­lyle and Bar­num. This under­cur­rent is fas­ci­nat­ing­ly hard to miss, mak­ing The Great­est Show­man often as camp as the best 1940s melodramas.

At 145 min­utes, The Great­est Show­man is chock-full with cap­i­tal-E-Enter­tain­ment. The earnest­ness of its emo­tion­al toil­ing may often be laugh­able, it nonethe­less makes for a tru­ly plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence, almost cir­cus-like as movie stars do impres­sive or ridicu­lous tricks for an eas­i­ly amused audi­ence. The songs may seem asi­nine at first, but they have a way of lodg­ing them­selves into your brain. Like that oth­er great show­man, Ewan McGre­gor in Moulin Rouge, Jackman’s Bar­num just wants to fill the world with sil­ly love songs. And what’s wrong with that?