Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/02/all-the-songs-from-the-greates.html
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I feel the movie portrays Barnum way too positively, especially for these Trump times.
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As has been noted, this is the film Barnum would have made about his life; consider it as an “unreliable narrator” story and it makes a lot more sense.
(Personally, I found the songs moderately forgettable but I can see that they clearly work for the teen girl market, which has embraced this film. There are a couple of proper “musical songs”, in the sense that the show wouldn’t work if they were removed because they progress both plot and characters arcs, but there aren’t nearly enough.)
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I’ll let Jenny rebut you here I hate The Greatest Showman more every moment
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The musical of all musicals also said it well.
“I find it really odd that the film cast Rebecca Ferguson in this relatively small, singing-heavy role but then had someone else do her singing.”
Here’s why. Rebecca Ferguson is an actress. Loren Allred is not. Ferguson leverages her acting to emote the song, to give it context. Allred could not have done this, not to the degree that is required. Everybody in the whole cast is lip syncing, by the way, since this is not Les Miserable where the actual singing is captured and used, so having an actress play this role is not odd at all.
Unlike you, I found the Jenny Lind concert sequence to be incredibly moving and absolutely the focus of the movie where so many emotions turn: Barnum realizing his dream and questioning the allegiance of his heart; Jenny falling in love with Barnum; Charity recognizing she might be losing her husband; Carlyle and Anne’s push-pull prelude to Rewrite the Stars. The scene is almost the nexus of the film, and to have anybody but the best people for the job would’ve been the wrong move, so kudos to Jackman and Gracey for making the right choices.
Also – this song just builds and builds. Frankly, I’ve never heard a song like this before – if you think about the big ballads in history – Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard theme song, Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go on, etc. – those songs build to a crescendo, but Never Enough keeps on building, all the way until the end. It just builds and builds; it is form following content, and vice versa. I find it to be an amazing piece of songcraft.
Meh. Her review was practically as long as the movie! I couldn’t get past 20% of her review without an overwhelming despair for humanity.
As for the movie, I thought it was great. Perfectly flawed, just like us.
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