Viktoriia Shydei 

English 101, Section 133

Instructor: Maksymchuk
May 24, 2020
Review
The greatest showman
The greatest showman is set up in Victorian-era New York and the mid-19th century.
This is an autobiographical story about P. T. Barnum, but with artistic reinvention
with help of musical genre.

As the film opens, we can see Phil, the son of the poor tailor. One of the father’s
wealthy clients has daughter Charity, with whom he falls in love, but parents send her
in the finishing school. In that time, Phil’s father dies, and the boy becomes an orphan
and wanders the streets trying not to starve and sends the letters to Charity. Time goes
and they get married and raising two beautiful daughters. Their life is humble and
poor, but very happy. Barnum loses the clerk job and takes a loan in the bank to open
Barnum's American Museum with wax models of different oddities. People are not as
interested as it’s expected that’s why sales are doing slowly. His daughters suggest
involving something “alive”. The main hero searches for “freaks” to perform in his
show for the museum. This show attracts a lot of people and gets a big success. The
famous critic James Gordon Bennett isn’t the, who likes his show, that’s he writes a
bad review in the newspapers. The man buys the big house for the family, but high
society doesn’t want to recognize them as equal. P. T. Barnum meets Phillip Carlyle,
famous playwright with a good reputation and convincing him to join his circus. He
falls in love with Anne, the Afro-American trapeze artist Carlyle organizes the
meeting with Queen Victoria, on which he suggests Jenny Lind to perform with him
in the role of a manager. Barnum leaves the family and job for the tour with “Swedish
Nightingale”. During this time relationship between Phillip and Anne is developing.
Phil understands that he misses his family and suddenly back home. In parallel,
arsonists are set the fire in the museum, because they want to sling out the “freaks”.
The building burns to the backgrounds and Carlyle gets injured badly. After the
Barnum's "scandal" and mansion selection by the bank, Charity returns to parent’s
house with their daughters. Phil is broke. The troupe come to him and say that he
gives the family and want to return the museum. Barnum makes up with the wife and
in partnership with Phillip and rebuild the circus.

Skilfully directed by Michael Gracey, the film gives you a feeling of classical
Broadway musical. The soundtrack is amazing. Every song is moving and looks
suitable. This is very hard to achieve. The original story is adopted with honour, but
also raised some questions to the scenarists and that’s why I can name this film
controversial. The film is gripping, touching, poignant and outstanding. The
relationship is sensitively handled and in some moments is full of suspense. The
camerawork is at the highest level. As Phil, Hugh Jackman is adorable and
charismatic with his aspiration to his dreams. For me, the most charming was Phillip
Carlyle convincingly acted by Zac Efron, who is gifted as the actor as the singer.
Thoughts of critics are ambiguous. It highly praised by Jackie K Cooper of HuffPost,
harshly criticised by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who is one of the most famous
critics for today.

With all this, I can recommend this film. If you’re like the musical genre and
touching stories, you will love it, as I do.