I have a visceral reaction when someone brings up The Greatest Showman. The 2017 movie musical starring Hugh Jackman, Zendaya and Zac Efron is almost universally loved, but in me it fires up a deep, fiery – perhaps irrational – hatred. I find it saccharine, emotionally manipulative, and at times outright offensive. It’s soulless, overly flashy while still boring, painfully earnest and (except Zendaya) is stuffed with hammy, cringey performances. Its success is a complete mystery to me.
It’s not a popular opinion. I’m often met with incredulity and accusations of being a miserable spoilsport. But sometimes someone will meet my eye with a knowing look, “I hate it too,” they whisper.
And yet here we are, seven years on from its release (which earned an eyewatering $435m – around £335m – at the box office), still touting it as worthy of merit. As well as the original soundtrack there’s a “reimagined” album, which features unbearable covers of the songs by the world’s blandest pop stars: Anne-Marie, Kelly Clarkson, Jess Glynne, Pink, James Arthur and the like. Singalong versions still regularly crop up in cinemas up and down the country and in 2019, for some reason unbeknownst to me, Jackman performed the opening and closing track, “The Greatest Show”, at the Brit Awards. Now, A new live “experience” based on the film, Come Alive! The Greatest Showman Circus Spectacular, has been announced.
Set in a 700-seater big top, the show will feature all the songs from the film and blend a new narrative story with the magic of the circus (which I presume means some live juggling). It’s set to open in London this September under the guardianship of creative director Simon Hammerstein, who happens to be the grandson of one of musical theatre’s gods, Oscar Hammerstein. In an excruciating example of life imitating art, the show will no doubt be a huge hit and those involved are already counting their earnings. Give me strength.
For those lucky enough to have never experienced the all-singing, all-dancing guilt trip that is The Greatest Showman, let me speed you through it. Very loosely based on the real life of P T Barnum (Jackman), an American businessman made famous by his circus in the late 19th century, the film follows his rise to fame and fortune as his show attracts huge crowds before it all comes crashing down in a fire.
The plot is thin, to say the least, though there are a few stray storylines to bulk out the one hour 45-minute runtime – Zendaya’s trapeze artist Anne and Efron’s playwright Philip have a sweet if very rushed love story; there’s Barnum’s obsession with pandering to high society which eventually leads to his downfall. The spotlit musical numbers are all mid-tempo Capital FM Summer Ball friendly inspo-hits – “Never Enough”, “This Is Me” and “Rewrite the Stars” are indistinguishable from one another and indiscernible from any other lachrymose musical ballad (the one you skip on the soundtrack). But with their key changes at just the right place, the swelling strings and a curiously distracting reverb on everyone’s voices, there’s no denying they make people cry.
In the UK especially, it is beloved. It made a million pounds a week even months after it opened. I like to think we’re a smart, discerning nation, but our adoration of such blatant emotional blackmail makes me question our collective culture. Are we so desperate to feel something that we’ll fall for any old tug on the heartstrings, however weak? The Greatest Showman has less potential for poignancy than a two-hour YouTube supercut of The X Factor’s most tearjerking sob story auditions.
I wouldn’t want you to think this criticism is born from pure snobbery. I love musicals, both on stage and film, old and new. I grew up on a diet of The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Grease and The King and I. “True Love” from High Society was my nightly lullaby. I cannot watch the 2012 movie version of Les Misérables without crying (proof that Jackman is not the problem) and I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve watched Hamilton on Disney+. Musicals can be joyful, urgent, exciting and boundary-pushing. But The Greatest Showman – mawkish, bombastic, cringe-inducing – is exactly what people who hate musicals would use to prove their point. It gives other shows a bad name, tarnishing the art form by leaning too heavily on musical tropes without any real love or virtuosity to back it up. I imagine ChatGPT might come up with something similar. And it’s not just that it’s a bad film – it’s troubling.
When I say the real Barnum ran a circus, it was really more of an old-fashioned freak show – his “oddities”, as they are called in the film, included people with various disabilities and visible differences, from “General Tom Thumb” who had dwarfism to the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker (who popularised the now defunct term “Siamese twins”) to the bearded woman Annie Jones, renamed as Lennie Lutz in the movie for some reason.
Quite obviously the more interesting historical figures, each deserving of a film about their lives, the circus performers feel crowbarred into Barnum’s hagiography. Only a handful get lines, the abuse they face from members of the public is shown but ultimately ignored. Throughout the film, Barnum proves himself to be an exploitative ringmaster – but he’s still ultimately the hero.
It’s also worth mentioning that very few of these “freaks” are played by actors with real disabilities, their differences instead painted on or digitally altered (while Sam Humphrey, who played General Tom Thumb – real name Charles Stratton – does have dwarfism, he walked on his knees to make him appear shorter and his voice was lowered in post-production). For the most part they were what disability activists call “cripping up”. Of course there are plenty of dodgy outdated elements of other musicals – the white saviour storyline of Miss Saigon (1989) feels uncomfortable nowadays, as does the class politics of My Fair Lady (1956). But The Greatest Showman was made in 2017. It should have known better.
To me it’s very clear why The Greatest Showman was such a smash, beyond the songs that stay in your head for weeks. Our base instinct to gawk at people with disabilities is alive and well and this film gave us permission to do just that, all the while convincing us that we were on their side.
There is very little interrogation of why these so-called circuses existed in the first place. Not one cast member appears to feel taken advantage of by Barnum or the audience paying to see them. We are to see their place on stage as a triumphant celebration of “humanity”, not exploitation. It’s trying to put a 21st-century compassionate slant on a 19th century story and it simply doesn’t wash – imagine the outcry if Come Alive! The Greatest Showman Circus Spectacular tried to pull the same stunt.
The Greatest Showman upholds Barnum as a swell guy. But the real showman he was a committed self-serving capitalist, though the musical’s version of Barnum had him strive to make more and more money only because he loved his family so much. How could he ever send his daughter to ballet class if he didn’t exploit the lesser fortunate!
The real man was also a bit of a conman. Despite being an anti-slavery campaigner, his first ever “show” in 1835 was the display of Joice Heth in a human zoo. She was a blind slave bought by Barnum and sold to the public as the 161-year-old nurse of former president George Washington – obviously not true – before the ringmaster held a public autopsy of her body for the price of 50 cents a ticket (conveniently this is all left out of the film). Is this really a man we should be remembering as “the greatest”? In 100 years will our descendants be watching a musical based on the life of someone like Jeff Bezos? I’m sure if by some miracle Hugh Jackman is still around, he’d be more than keen to take on such a heroic role. Title track: “Next Day Delivery”.
I know my pleas to leave this awful film well alone will fall on deaf ears. A stage adaptation is rumoured to premiere on Broadway next year and despite a confirmed sequel being halted by various business dealings in 2020, Hugh Jackman is keeping dreams alive. “There’s a chance!” he told fans a couple of years ago.
We know from Star Wars and Marvel’s multiverse that when Disney (who owns 20th Century Fox, the production company behind The Greatest Showman) has a hit on its hands, it will milk it dry. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m lamenting the existence of this awful film for the rest of my days, having endured several TV show spin-offs, a neverending West End production and some sort of intergalactic knighthood for Hugh Jackman’s services to entertainment (probably).
I’ll still likely be in the minority – but, in the now seemingly immortal words of the worst musical I’ve ever had the displeasure to endure, I am brave. I am bruised. This is me.
‘The Greatest Showman’ is streaming on Disney+. ‘Come Alive! The Greatest Showman Circus Spectacular’ is on at Empress Museum, Earl’s Court from September.