I walked into this rewatch wondering why I had never returned to The Greatest Showman after seeing it in the cinema. I remembered disliking it. I remembered feeling cold to it. I wanted to know whether that instinct had been unfair or premature.
This is why.
Five minutes in and I have not heard a single spoken word. The songs are much louder than they need to be, vocals auto-tuned to within an inch of their lives. Dialogue barely exists and, when it does appear, it is whispered, rushed and flattened into irrelevance. The film is already telling me what matters and it is not speech.
Twenty minutes in and Barnum is a fool. Arrogant, selfish, utterly delirious. Who risks their family, their stability and their happiness without a single meaningful conversation. Not even Hugh Jackman can coax anything genuinely likeable from him, and the film is already doing heavy lifting to sand down the reality of the man behind the myth.
Am I losing my hearing again, or is everyone whispering in this damn film.
Keala Settle appears. The voice. The presence. The power. And immediately the dread sets in. She is going to be wasted, isn’t she.
There is a rule that poor visuals can be forgiven if the sound is great. Here, the sound is the problem. The soundtrack is full of bona fide bangers, I will grant the creative team that much. But when that is the only positive after thirty minutes, you have to question how so many people fell in love with this.
By forty minutes the songs barely even serve a narrative purpose. I have no reason to care about Barnum or his antics, nor why Zac Efron has suddenly entered the frame. I do not know who he is or what function he serves because, once again, I cannot hear the spoken word.
Character is not built through behaviour or consequence. It is outsourced to lyrics and volume.
The protestors are not the issue here, are they.
The problem is Barnum’s ego. His lack of foresight. His refusal to protect the people he has dragged into his dangerous, daydream-fuelled spectacle. Rather than safeguarding them, he runs away with them, carrying their risk while keeping the reward.
What in the pantomime set is Buckingham Palace.
It is exhausting trying to care about Barnum. The empathy belongs entirely with his cast. People who believe they are growing, becoming visible, finding stability. In reality they are little more than extensions of his ego and flair. When this all collapses, and you feel it coming a mile off, it will not be Barnum paying the price. It never is.
Then comes Jenny Lind. A world-renowned opera singer reduced to a pop ballad. Let us domesticate her. Shave the edges off. Make her palatable. Barnum genuinely seems to believe he can run off into the sunset with her. Thank God she briefly puts him in his place. Of course he learns nothing.
Fifty-five minutes in and he still does not care. His family walk away and he chooses to continue entertaining. He hides his cast, protects his image, centres himself. How this went on to become a worldwide smash hit remains baffling.
This Is Me makes a noble attempt to hand ownership back to the sensationalised cast, but it is undeserved here, squandered on a moment that has not been earned. The real story was always theirs. The film simply is not interested in telling it.
Why is everyone whispering.
Barely three minutes pass before we are rewriting the stars again. I put a pan of pasta on. I scroll. The film loses me completely.
Then chaos. A fire. A disaster that exists solely to give Barnum something heroic to run into. Of course he does. Of course his ego survives the flames intact.
Thank God his wife leaves him. At last, a consequence.
Oh. Never mind. That did not last.
The show moves into a tent. Barnum runs back to his family. Happily ever after.
As if.
Circus is not stability. It is not resolution. It is a turbulent, consuming lifestyle, not a destination reached once the right song plays. The film refuses to understand this because understanding it would require acknowledging harm.
What we are left with is not inspiration but erasure. A moral takedown disguised as uplift. A blatant disregard for the truth that avoids telling the far more worthy, far more heartbreaking story.
I walked into this wondering why I had never watched it again since the cinema.
Now I remember.
Never again.
Colin Cushion 
Leave a comment