Today, after weeks of watching the trailer to this movie, finally it premiered for the first time in Indonesia. My wife and I were expecting to see this one as it seemed to promise a wonderful story of P.T. Barnum, the man who created the Circus. Since there was not a lot of theaters playing the movie, we had limited options to see this. Luckily it played in the cinema not too far from our home at Lotte Avenue. Anyway, let us get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
P. T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman - Wolverine in various X-Men movies, Real Steel etc) was a man of poor background and had very huge imagination. He was not satisfied with just having a life as a regular working people and since he promised his wife Charity (Michelle Williams - Brokeback Mountain, Dawson's Creek TV series etc) that he would give the best kind of life to her and to their daughters Caroline and Helen, he always tried to do something grand and earn wealth plus people's respect.
That was when he somehow thought of gathering people with various uniqueness that other people would consider them as freaks and put them on a show. The people he gathered were combination of the dwarf Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey), the bearded lady Lettie (Keala Settle), the trapeze artist Anne Wheeler (Zendaya - Spider-Man: Homecoming) with her brother W.D (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II - Baywatch movie etc) and various others like the tallest man, the heaviest man and so on. Due to the irregularities, many people wanted to go see Barnum's shows which later on would be called a Circus. But he was not happy with just having a Circus show and he wanted to expand. Which was why he started to enlist the help of Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron - The Neighbors, Baywatch movie etc) and also to sign a great singer named Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson - Life, The Girl on the Train etc).
Barnum's circus was also getting a lot of resistance from the people around the area, which would create lots of problem for him and his family. So could the circus be a success and could Barnum provide what he promised to his family? Find them all in this musical drama movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When I saw the trailer to the movie earlier, my impression was the movie would be filled with lots of touching moments and it would provide a wonderful feeling. However, after finished seeing the movie, I could not help but feel that it was not as good or wonderful as I had expected. I felt the movie lacked the continuous emotional ride that I had anticipated. To tell you the truth, the starting was really good until around half of the movie and the build up to the circus creation was really great. But then the story's momentum seemed to be getting down in the middle and made the climax felt a bit flat.
My personal view is the storyline involving Jenny Lind's character was the part that was causing this. Now I do not have negative thought of her and I think Rebecca's Ferguson singing was really wonderful, but it felt like a distraction. I realized that her character's addition was to give more dramatic feel to P.T. Barnum's character growth, but as a result it made the movie felt a little out of focus on what I think should be the most important issue which was the Circus and its people. When I discussed this with my wife, apparently she had the same thoughts as well. I know that the film was supposed to be a biography of PT Barnum, and Jenny Lind was one of the singer he had really orbited, which probably was the main reason for her to be shown in this movie. Perhaps it is my own fault for expecting more story involving the Circus (should have known from the title of The Greatest Showman and not The Greatest Show).
As a musical movie, this one was filled with tons of singing and songs. There were a lot of scenes where it could have been dialogues among the characters but instead were shown in singing. I think it was similar to another musical movie that I saw early this year Beauty and the Beast. It was certainly having more singing scenes than musical animated movies such as Trolls or Moana. So those who are not fans of musical movies would definitely not able to enjoy the movie. For me personally though, as I have opened up to movies such as this (thanks to my wife's influence), I am now able to enjoy it better. And I would definitely give a chance to a musical movie that won the Academy Awards last year La La Land that was highly recommended by my wife.
The songs of this movie were sung wonderfully by the cast but there were some songs that my wife and I really loved, i.e the opening song which felt very spirit uplifting titled "The Greatest Show", the song by Zac Efron and Zendaya titled "Rewrite the Stars" and the song that was nominated in Golden Globes titled "This is Me" sung by Keala Settle and the troupe. Oh I also personally liked 1 song that I think had very cool choreography titled "The Other Side" by Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron. For additional info, there was no end credit scene, but you can listen to 2 or 3 songs played during that scene.
Overall, I think that as a musical movie, this one surely would satisfy fans of this genre. But as a supposedly great biography movie, my personal view was that it could have been better. Then again, that's just my personal feel. For you who wanted to find out why this movie was nominated for 2017 Best Picture in musical or comedy, then you definitely have to watch this one.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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