User blog:Teddyfail/Teddy Reviews: The Greatest Showman

Weird choice for a review. Instead of the event of the year, it's the Oscar bait musical about the circus showman P.T. Barnum. (I might do a review on The Last Jedi but I'm not sure if I'm expressing myself™ or just adding a fart in the wind.) Also, I'm writing this not because I have some groundbreaking hot take about this movie. I'm doing this just to getting better on my writing skill, so let me use your attention and indulge me in this exercise.

Let this review begin

The Greatest Showman
To put it lightly, P. T. Barnum is not a great guy, so a cheerful musical about a freak show owning con-man, it's a weird take on the controversial man from the start. The Greatest Showman is not at all historic accurate. The movie basically a guy with a family has a circus business and goes on a tour. Just look at the real guy's face. He looks nothing like Hugh Jackman. He looks more like if Paul Giamatti’s face got punched in. But to be fair, I mean half of the good biopics has took alot of creative liberty. Hamilton, The Social Network, The Disaster Artist all are not the exact story of the man and they are all really good.

But you don’t get the sexy charming Wolverine to learn an ugly con-man’s life story, so let’s put the actual history of Barnum aside, and just talk about the movie and the music.

The movie structure is not great. Barnum just kinda goes from place to place very passionately, but why is he leaving the circus and go on tour with Jenny Lind, is he doing the show just for the money or for the dream, what is his dream. None of these thing you know for sure. He just kept going and his show kept making money, then he just leave the showbusiness for his family in the end. It has a really vague message of chasing dreams and acceptance, but there's also topics like privilege and racism, and these were some important part of Barnum's arc and the story's structure. It's not just some throw away topic to make the film more important than it is. However, just for the benefit of the doubt, let's say the whole film is about the broadest definition of acceptance and everything I just said falls under that. Musical usually isn't the most complex movie ever made. La La Land and Singing in the Rain is just about white people wanting to preform. After all, it's a musical. The music is the important part. Does the song work?

All the music are pop songs. It's pop that you can listen it on the radio. So pop that this year's YouTube rewind could be called "This is 2017". So pop that part of the opening number sounds a bit like Despacito. But unlike Despacito, the songs are very forgettable except "This Is Me". I can't sing any of the song to you if I try and I just listen to the soundtrack. They are not poison like Rebecca Black, but it's very generic pop. And here's the problem, the movie sets in the 1800s America. Pop just doesn't mix well with it. It really doesn't help that the characters just suddenly jumps to a song. They would have a normal conversation, then Hugh Jackman would just burst into song.

But even with all that said, it’s quite entertaining. The cast is very fun to watch. The song is good while listening. The cinematography isn’t to bad that you want to pull your eyes out. Just don’t think about how the real guy really is, the story structure, or anything else, and you might enjoy it. I don’t believe it, but I think they made a popcorn Oscar bait movie.

Did you read this? No Yes Yes, but why you did this Yes, and I wasted 5 minutes of my life for you

P.S. Now after a day of thinking the weird ending of him leaving the circus. Could the whole film be Hugh Jackman’s life story, with the freak show a metaphor for the X-Men franchise (a group of abnormal people with Hugh as the lead), and now with ‘’Logan’’, he will hand the lead of the franchise to a younger “showman”? Maybe I’m just bullshitting. The last two movie I watched are Logan and ‘’The Last Jedi'' so I have been think about meta shit.