The Greatest Showman

The box office curve of Michael Gracey’s musical explains it better than any review. It opened on three thousand and six screens to eight point eight million dollars, only fourth that weekend. Its second weekend brought fifteen point five million, a seventy six percent rise, the largest increase ever recorded for a title playing more than three thousand venues. That pattern says what this is: not a picture critics send you to, but one people return to with someone else. The consequence is practical. The songs do not imitate period music; they are written in contemporary pop arrangements and the anachronism is a choice. Anyone hoping for a nineteenth century sound will bristle from the first number; anyone wanting an album to play away from the film is in the right place. One hundred and five minutes is short for a life spanning decades, so years vanish between numbers and drama thins wherever nobody sings. The project was greenlit in a rehearsal room, when Hugh Jackman, fresh from nasal surgery, ignored medical advice and sang From Now On. His songwriters had been hired four years earlier. Who it’s for: anyone reading present day pop arrangements inside an 1800s setting as a choice rather than a fault. Who it’s not for: viewers wanting the exploitation of his performers reckoned with.