Hugh Jackman stars as American ringmaster PT Barnum in a briskly paced celebration of the admittedly shady man’s grandest enduring contribution to American society; the worth of pure and reinvigorating escapist spectacle.
Telling the origin of Barnum’s famous circus of oddities and wonders inspired by a life spent dragging himself out of the slums with a chip on his shoulder through the lens of musical fantasy reveling in the display of unabashed flash and bang that the man’s shows were known for, “The Greatest Showman” makes no effort to pretend to be a serious biopic of any sort.
The film is a celebration of the sort of diverting extravaganza piped by the man and stoking the imaginations of children and wannabe entertainers for generations, with the visual splendor and dangerously catchy soundtrack used as tools to tell a simple fictionalized story of Barnum’s dream and the people along the way that helped him achieve it.
Hugh Jackman turns in a stellar performance that should be of no surprise to anyone familiar with his background in stage performance or even half of his versatile film career but everybody in the cast is given a chance to shine and bounce off of one another, including the criminally underrated Zac Efron who gets to cut loose in ways I wish he would more, Zendaya who is proving to be a real up and comer, and especially the cast playing Barnum’s Circus Freaks strike a solid humanizing tone without being defenseless plot devices while also capturing the mixed reception that would come with landing a well paying job from a man that saw your value in a society that shuns you, while never letting go of how thin the job’s line between empowerment and exploitation was along with how regularly that line was crossed.
Every area of craftsmanship from stellar sound track and breathtaking choreography to an excellent usage of cinematography that captures the best of cinematic intimacy and theatrical grandeur is so top notch that its only crippling flaw is seeing it ultimately applied to something that is nothing more than the hollow yet diverting spectacle it aims to be the best version of.
“The Greatest Showman” has Oscar level filmmaking applied to a movie that uses potentially questionable content from a historical context to create a pure crowd pleaser with just enough depth to hold together as a moderately entertaining distraction and little else.
Those tools feel occasionally like overkill as you may find yourself waiting for it to take a step up into something greater but it doesn’t quite diminish the impact of what works if you’re willing to take it in the jovial and bombastic holiday seasonal spirit of popcorn fun for the family that it was clearly intended for and succeeds within.
7 Main Events out of 10
When Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero set out to make “The Room,” nobody on Earth could have predicted the legacy that the final product left behind nor that the chronicle of its creation would serve as an ultimate case study and deconstruction of the Magical Mary Sue fantasy and the destructive places that it can lead.
Brothers James and Dave Franco portray the duo across the growth of their friendship and attempts to make it big in Hollywood that ultimately coalesce into the mesmerizingly terrible drama gone wrong that would grow into a cult phenomenon, presenting a relationship equally touching and inspiring as well as mortifyingly bound in some form of Stockholm Syndrome that never ceases to be compelling and perversely fascinating to watch.
The insight that “The Disaster Artist” offers on everything that went wrong with the making of “The Room” resulting in the legendary final product unveiled to the world is uncanny and a bizarre reflection on how Hollywood culture operates, making for a strongly positive turning point in James Franco’s directorial career as well as one of his best performances yet in the from of Tommy Wiseau, whose impression remains almost disturbingly accurate without ever devolving into caricature. His ability to maintain the nonsensical quirks of the man’s personality without crafting a longwinded or mean spirited joke is quite possibly one of the year’s best performances.
Ultimately however, the movie never manages to quite make it beyond being a professional quality fan film for a niche cult phenomenon amongst purveyors of B-movies.
Aside from the need of one more editing pass to tighten up the film’s narrative, “The Disaster Artist” runs into the unfortunate trap of not knowing whether to celebrate Wiseau’s more disturbing eccentricities or indict him for the damage that they cause to those around him, backing away from the release of “The Room’s” fallout with an exalting cop out that defies the humanity that the film seemed so dead set upon studying.
Because of these structural problems and narrow focus of a phenomenon that the world at large has very little awareness of, “The Disaster Artist” is unlikely to work for those not already initiated into its own brand of insanity via artistic fascination of how “The Room” came to be and why it exists in the state that it does.
For those in the loop or interested on how such a film can come into being however, it proves mildly diverting even if its Award season aspirations are about as confusing as the makeup of its very subject matter.
7 Funny Mark Stories out of 10
Once it settles in to the viewer that Guillermo Del Toro’s fantasy romance of a mythical Merman held hostage by the US government in the mid-twentieth century is somehow not an Abe Sapien movie of “Hellboy” fame (how he managed this without Darkhorse getting on him is beyond me), the tale weaved by the creature’s unconventional romance with mute janitor Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, becomes a noticeable observation of the dangers of societal perceptions and the fragility that could become their undoing if we were willing to simply listen and learn just a bit of empathy.
“The Shape of Water” studies a primitive time in America’s socioeconomic development during which the advancement of civilization appeared to be at a technological height juxtaposed to rampant celebrated and institutionalized cultural repression.
Between Elisa’s befriending of her closeted intellectual neighbor, friendship with her fellow custodian Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, and the gradual blossoming of her romance with the amphibious creature displaying an obvious intelligence to those willing to simply observe and pay attention rather than speak, who has been subjected to the worst of humanities cruelties opposite a woman that has developed a loving network of human warmth despite society’s efforts to keep her down, the film is far from subtle about its message about the positives of cultural diffusion but its sincerity has led to the craft of a film both beautiful and haunting from afar as well as infuriating and scary regarding its relevancy despite being a 60s period piece.
The toxicity of exalting traditional relationship dynamics as the norm and the complacency that perpetuates them along with the innate human nature to speak rather than listen preventing us from understanding their dangers from the ground level up becomes the metatextual basis for the literal conflict of a woman standing in defiance of grossly single minded institutions with more care put into their chest thumping then the charges that they protect and while it may seem rather on the nose, it comes together as a surprisingly heartwarming forbidden romance packed with dramatic turns, sweet moments, and comedic misunderstandings and musings alike, including the first musical number that I’ve seen in years to actually bring me to tears.
“The Shape of Water” is a brilliant brand of film that isn’t quite perfect but is always a sight for sore eyes when it arrives in the modern landscape of overly calculated shills of corporately backed spectacle of modern mainstream film, especially of the genre variety.
Despite needing a 20 minute trim that could have made nigh flawless, its experience is one I would not trade for the world.
9 Wet and Wild Times out of 10
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