Michael Gracey
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Other than the uncomfortably honest Robbie Williams biopic Better Man and the parodical Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, these films seldom break out of the finely carved mold of image-rehabilitating cinematic exercises.
You’ll get your occasional Better Man, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM!: What makes these projects stand out amongst the rest is their ability and willingness to portray the artist in question from a vulnerable lens.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
…it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman or even the Robbie Williams-is-a-CGI-chimp romp Better Man.
It’s a genre that favors bold swings in the form of something like Better Man, or even the bombastic insanity of Elvis.
This is a film for folks who thought Moulin Rouge! was too racy and had too many distinct songs with distinct flavor or genre (soul/funk/rock) and would prefer instead that a computer algorithm that overemphasizes the words eyes, stars, and dream spit out flattened, Auto-Tuned anthems.
Former special-effects supervisor Gracey directs The Greatest Showman like an extended music video, combining American Idol–style songs with brass arrangements and choreography that imitate Michael Jackson videos, all mashed into the nonsense extravagance of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge.
The numbers in “The Greatest Showman” have a dance-pop fire that keeps you hooked, and that bursting-out quality recalls, at times, the spirit of “Moulin Rouge!” Yet “The Greatest Showman,” while it’s all but destined to become the crowd-pleaser of the holiday season (and, just possibly, a surprise awards contender), lacks the darkly audacious grandeur that made “Moulin Rouge!” a work of movie-musical art.
The movie is at its best when it embraces its Vincente Minnelli and Busby Berkeley roots and eschews music video aesthetics made popular for modern movie musicals after Baz Luhrmann utilized them so magnificently with Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge .
Si a eso se le suma su condición de biopic musical sobre P.T. Barnum, pionero del circo y del show business modernos, y que aúna en su formulación visual tradición y modernidad a lo Moulin Rouge –la película de Baz Luhrmann es constantemente citada aquí, desde los mismos posters promocionales-, se confirma su condición de filme de diseño con presupuesto holgado (84 millones de dólares).
The comparisons to Moulin Rouge! are obvious, although Greatest Showman is not as stylised or audacious as the Baz Luhrmann classic.
Its rehashed theme, which dates back at least as far as Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, holds that entertainment has an inherent value in its capacity to amuse the downtrodden classes and make them forget their worries.
Ziegfeld Follies (1945)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
influenced The Greatest Showman (2017)
Visuals
A barroom battle of wills between Jackman and Efron is extraordinary, the pair making like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire tackling “The Babbit and the Bromide” in 1945’s Ziegfeld Follies .
The physicality convinces, as do the animal strength, agitated shrieking, and sudden explosions of violent rage—even if the masks and prosthetics often recall the headgear worn in 2024’s bizarre Robbie Williams bio-musical Better Man, requiring considerable suspension of disbelief.
Primate is no Better Man…
Circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum may have led a fascinating life, but you wouldn’t know it from The Greatest Showman, a broad and broad-minded musical that’s closer to High School Musical than Freaks on the pop-culture scale.
Imagine Tod Browning’s 1932 pre-Code horror film Freaks asset-stripped by a third-rate Baz Luhrmann wannabe, the chilling refrain “one of us” sanitised into something closer to a soft-drink commercial tagline than a menace.
Writer-director Rian Johnson — who previously displayed wildly inventive storytelling skills in indie classics “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom” and the Bruce Willis-Joseph Gordon-Levitt showdown “Looper” — takes the reins and creates a film that gives plenty of nods to the past in the first half while turning things upside down in the rousing second half.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
influenced The Greatest Showman (2017)
The Greatest Showman, on the other hand, is an unabashed throwback, consciously modelling itself on the likes of Carousel and The Greatest Show On Earth, but adding modern pop tunes and a whole heap of CGI.
But the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus used to call itself the “The Greatest Show on Earth,” so it’s reasonable that Michael Gracey’s musical biopic of would call itself The Greatest Showman .
Set against the same circus backdrop that made movie history in The Greatest Show on Earth, material this colorful has its own unbeatable entertainment value, so there is no excuse for the pedestrian direction by first-timer Michael Gracey, the weak, ho-hum screenplay by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, the gaudy cinematography by Seamus McGarvey or the noisy but undistinguished score.
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Directed by Gary Trousdale
influenced The Greatest Showman (2017)
Characters
Smartly, the filmmakers — who include screenwriters Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon (the latter directed the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Dreamgirls and wrote the film version of Chicago) — also know how to keep a four-quadrant family musical from sinking into Chitty territory by employing devices that also will please the Broadway crowd, particularly the Bob Fosse-like opening number as well as sensational choreography throughout.
No small factor is that one of its co-authors was Bill Condon, a fine filmmaker and film writer previously known for "Gods and Monsters," "Kinsey," "Dreamgirls" and "Beauty and the Beast."
But in the script by Jenny Bicks ("Sex and the City") and Bill Condon ("Beauty and the Beast"), his lowly upbringing still makes him yearn for acceptance among the upper-crust swells.
Williams' acting chops are completely wasted in a film where her part essentially demands that she smiles as purely as Belle strolling through town in Beauty and the Beast.
Song Sung Blue (2025)
Directed by Craig Brewer
influenced by The Greatest Showman (2017), Better Man (2024)
Characters
Hugh Jackman, in a way, reprises his role as the gung-ho idealist from The Greatest Showman: the ringleader of a band who can motivate anyone with his fervor and aspirations, but also make him a wife guy.
2024’s underrated Better Man, for instance, re-casts its subject — British pop icon Robbie Williams – as a CGI monkey.
Jackman recently said Anderson gave him the same feeling he had working with Zendaya on The Greatest Showman, and honestly? He’s right.
I still have not seen “The Greatest Showman” (2017), but anyone would have to be under a rock to not know that he is really a song and dance man, not Wolverine.
Jackman is a beloved music man from The Boy from Oz and The Greatest Showman…
…especially from Jackman who is nothing if not a showman (perhaps, the greatest showman???)
As scripted by TV writer Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City, The Big C) and Oscar winner Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), the film pivots around what should be a foolproof central character: Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891).
Hugh Jackman stars as a fantasy version of circus impresario P.T. Barnum: The story, written by Bill Condon (of Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters fame) and Jenny Bicks (who has written largely for TV and was a producer of Sex and the City) presents Barnum as a kindly savior to human misfits, a man who taught tattooed oddballs and conjoined twins how to love and accept themselves.
As for the script by TV vet Jenny Bicks and Dreamgirls writer-director Bill Condon, it offers only pop psychology in its look at P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) as a troubled overachiever and a politically correct framework that’s ultimately at odds with the more troubling aspects of its leading character and the time in which he lived.
In loosely adapting for the big screen the life of famed showman P. T. Barnum, director Michael Gracey (making a dazzling directorial debut) and screenwriters Jenny Bicks (2014's " Rio 2 ") and Bill Condon (2006's " Dreamgirls ") have crafted a pair of quite literally soaring love stories set against the backdrop of the museum-turned-sideshow business Barnum created.
Jenny Bicks (HBO's 'Sex and the City') and Bill Condon's ("Chicago," "Dreamgirls") screenplay stretches the truth and condenses time, Gracey's overly modern interpretation wearing its message of diversity and acceptance on its sleeve.
El musical está vivito y coleando, gracias en gran parte a la avalancha de remakes “live action” que produce Disney anualmente, y por supuesto, como respuesta directa al rotundo éxito de La La Land, la casi casi ganadora del Oscar de Mejor Película del 2016, que eventualmente fue a parar en manos de Moonlight.
Emboldened by a sparkling soundtrack from songwriter-composers Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (2016's " La La Land "), a miraculous score from John Debney (2011's " No Strings Attached ") and Joseph Trapanese (2016's " Allegiant "), and lustrous lensing from cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (2017's " Life "), "The Greatest Showman" is glorious cinematic spectacle done exactly right.A quixotic marriage of image and sound, the picture taps, claps, belts and swings its way into a place of unfettered nirvana.
It is 2017’s La La Land and a cinematic love letter to dreamers everywhere.
They’re best known for this year’s Tony winner Dear Evan Hansen (“So let the sun come streaming in / ’Cause you’ll reach up / And you’ll rise again / Lift your head and look around / You will be found”) and the lyrics to Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (“Someone in the crowd could / Take you where you wanna go / If you’re the someone ready to be found.”)
But where those features made use of their visual pyrotechnics in a way that fit the characters and the stories Luhrmann was attempting to tell, it’s been very hard for pale imitations like Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia! or Adam Shankman’s Rock of Ages (just to name two) to do something similar.
The movie is at its best when it embraces its Vincente Minnelli and Busby Berkeley roots and eschews music video aesthetics made popular for modern movie musicals after Baz Luhrmann utilized them so magnificently with Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge .
With six credited editors, a list that includes Oscar-winners Tom Cross ( Whiplash ) and Joe Hutshing ( J.F.K. , Born on the Fourth of July ) and a 105-minute running time that feels much shorter than it actually is, there is a bit of a rushed quality that’s difficult to ignore.
Unlike a something like Mary Poppins, where the songs are instantly accessible and have since gone on to become beloved classics, few will be humming The Greatest Showman‘s numbers as they exit the theater.
It’s enough to make you want to see “The Elephant Man” turned into a musical written by Lady Gaga.
And then there's the film's arguable centerpiece number "This Is Me," an anthem of empowerment and acceptance in the face of adversity delivered by the exceptionally talented Keala Settle (2015's " Ricki and the Flash "), as bearded performer Lettie Lutz (Keala Settle).
Emboldened by a sparkling soundtrack from songwriter-composers Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (2016's " La La Land "), a miraculous score from John Debney (2011's " No Strings Attached ") and Joseph Trapanese (2016's " Allegiant "), and lustrous lensing from cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (2017's " Life "), "The Greatest Showman" is glorious cinematic spectacle done exactly right.A quixotic marriage of image and sound, the picture taps, claps, belts and swings its way into a place of unfettered nirvana.
Emboldened by a sparkling soundtrack from songwriter-composers Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (2016's " La La Land "), a miraculous score from John Debney (2011's " No Strings Attached ") and Joseph Trapanese (2016's " Allegiant "), and lustrous lensing from cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (2017's " Life "), "The Greatest Showman" is glorious cinematic spectacle done exactly right.A quixotic marriage of image and sound, the picture taps, claps, belts and swings its way into a place of unfettered nirvana.