In a sentenceNineteenth-century New York, twenty-first-century drum machines, and Hugh Jackman selling both at full volume
New York in the nineteenth century. P. T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), a tailor’s son, marries Charity (Michelle Williams) against her rich father’s wishes and raises two daughters with her in a tenement. When the shipping company he clerks for goes under, he borrows against its sunken fleet and buys a museum of wax figures nobody visits. His daughters tell him he needs something alive, so he goes looking: Lettie Lutz (Keala Settle), a bearded woman with a voice; Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey), whom he puts on a horse as General Tom Thumb; the trapeze artists Anne and W. D. Wheeler (Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). The critic James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks) dismisses it as a circus. Barnum paints the word on the sign and hires the playwright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron) to bring in a better class of customer.
Plays from YouTube when you press play; nothing loads from them until then.
Hugh Jackman gives P. T. Barnum everything he has, and Michael Gracey’s musical sprints from anthem to anthem without stopping to look at the man. Two songs land properly; the rest are cut to pieces before they can.
Michael Gracey’s first film takes P. T. Barnum, the nineteenth-century showman who made a fortune from hoaxes and human curiosities, and turns him into a poor boy who only wants to give people joy. It is a musical with original songs and no stage show behind it, which is rare. It is also a film that never stands still long enough to find out what it thinks about its subject. Hugh Jackman carries it a long way on charm. Not all the way.
Barnum, a tailor’s son, marries Charity (Michelle Williams) against her father’s wishes, loses his clerking job and buys a museum of wax figures nobody visits. His daughters tell him he needs something alive, so he collects people: Lettie Lutz (Keala Settle), a bearded woman who sings; Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey), renamed General Tom Thumb; the trapeze artists Anne and W. D. Wheeler (Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). The critic James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks) calls it a circus. Barnum paints the word on the sign.
The songs, by Pasek and Paul, are stadium pop in period fancy dress: snare hits, handclaps, choruses built to be shouted back. Two of them work. “The Other Side”, in which Barnum recruits the playwright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron) across a bar, is a proper duet of two men out-talking each other, with shot glasses sliding down the counter on the beat. “This Is Me”, Settle’s number, is the one people remember, rightly. It moved us more than we expected, and Settle did it: she begins half-hidden in a back corridor and ends leading her company out through the front doors with her chin up. Then we counted how often the camera had left her face, and the feeling cooled. The film does not trust her to hold the shot. It should have.
That distrust runs through the whole thing. Six editors are credited, Spencer Susser, Tom Cross, Jon Poll, Joe Hutshing, Robert Duffy and Michael McCusker, and the film cuts on almost every downbeat. “Never Enough”, the ballad for the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson), is one woman on a stage under one light, and the film still cuts to Barnum’s face to tell us how to take it. Seamus McGarvey lights everything in amber and violet through smoke, so New York looks like a perfume advert with hansom cabs. Nathan Crowley’s museum is a tall brick box with a rooftop for the family to dream on, and Ellen Mirojnick’s red ringmaster’s coat is the best-made object in the film.
What the film will not do is look at Barnum. The real man put people on display for money. The film knows it, because characters keep saying so, and then Barnum gives them a stage and a song about self-acceptance and the matter is closed. Bill Condon and Jenny Bicks’s screenplay allows him one flaw, an ambition that makes him neglect his wife and troupe, and resolves it in a single number. Williams gets a hopeful smile and a rooftop and little else. Efron and Zendaya’s romance across the colour line gets “Rewrite the Stars”, a trapeze duet that is the film’s most graceful sequence and its whole treatment of the subject.
Jackman is the reason to watch. He is a musical performer in a film with none of a musical’s patience, and he supplies it himself, holding a look a beat longer than the edit wants and selling every lyric as if he wrote it. He plays Barnum as a man who believes his own patter, the kindest reading available and the only one the film allows. John Debney and Joseph Trapanese’s score fills the gaps between songs with strings, and there are not many gaps.
It runs 105 minutes and carries a PG, and children who like the songs will not be bored, because it has been built to make boredom impossible. Adults may find that the absence of dull moments is not the same as the presence of interesting ones. Play the songs in the car; they are better there. It opened in British cinemas on 26 December 2017, and a family sofa after Christmas dinner is where it belongs.
The review calls it a joyfully insane spectacle and sonic boom of musical cinema that sells the magic of the movies. They single out Hugh Jackman shining in an empty but energetic spectacle worthy of Barnum’s name.
Read the full review →The critic praises Hugh Jackman’s boundless energy and the film’s irresistibly life-affirming enthusiasm and romanticism, calling it a crowd-pleasing circus musical that deserves to become a Christmas classic.
Read the full review →The film delivers pure musical entertainment of a sumptuous vintage with visual resplendence, stylish choreography and solid gold magic; Hugh Jackman’s thrilling musicality is the dynamo that glitzes up the screen.
Read the full review →The critic praises the film as an unabashed piece of pure entertainment with memorable songs and strong performances, especially from Hugh Jackman and Keala Settle. She singles out the inclusive spirit celebrating diversity and misfits for praise.
Read the full review →The critic calls it a crowd-pleaser and wholesome musical that soars with energy, romantic spirit, and flashy razzmatazz. He singles out the dance-pop numbers and Hugh Jackman's effervescent performance for praise.
Read the full review →The film is an unabashed throwback musical carried by Hugh Jackman’s commitment and catchy songs, though it occasionally stumbles into mawkishness and over-relies on CGI. It ultimately delivers old-school musical thrills with heart.
Read the full review →
La La LandPasek and Paul’s lyrics, a director who lets a number breathe.
ChicagoShowbusiness as a con, and a film honest enough to say so.
Freaks · not on Fi1m yetThe sideshow performers as people, made when the sideshow was still open.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg · not on Fi1m yetEvery line sung, colours louder than Barnum’s, and it still breaks your heart.
Sing Street · not on Fi1m yetOriginal songs, no budget, a boy inventing himself in Dublin.
