Is 'The Greatest Showman' Good? OnStage Blog Debates...

The Greatest Showman is a perfectly polarizing musical: 59% Rotten tomato score, with a 48/100 Metacritic score.

We realized we never put out an official editorial on the movie since its release in December 2017. We were in the process of formalizing it, but, as it turns out, we couldn’t agree on whether it is good or not! So we decided to publish our debate over chat, edited to make it publication friendly of course.

Mild profanities, especially about some of the directing choices, were edited out.

Greg Ehrhardt (Contributor, OnStage Blog): Chris, we have to write about Greatest Showman. I just watched this with my family for the first time last night. The songs are absolutely terrific; my daughter has the soundtrack playing on loop for the last 7 days. I know it’s a half-baked movie plot-wise, but so what, it’s a musical, and the songs are unbelievably catchy. Isn’t that what matters to make a good musical?

Chris Peterson (Founder, OnStage Blog): Yes and no. Yes, the songs need to be good and catchy. But they also need to make sense within the story of the show. The problem I have with this one is that it feels like some of these songs were cut from other Pasek & Paul pieces. Also, none of them are time-specific. Hearing a 2010s pop score in a period piece is weird. It works for movies like Moulin Rouge but not here.

Greg: I agree certain songs make zero sense in the context of the movie. The script could have absolutely used like 20 more minutes of character building, for sure. But I think you’re missing something crucial here for the evaluation, which is, adults aren’t the target audience for this musical?

Think about the themes of the music, about embracing who you are, following your dreams, go against the grain. These are all themes you see in Disney TV Musicals targeted at kids. Let’s be real, teenagers and tweens don’t need proper plot development, they need catchy music with a good message. I mean, any musical targeted at adults wouldn’t have just glossed over P.T. Barnum’s obviously sketchy business practices, but high schoolers don’t need to know that stuff.

Chris: And if this was just a TV movie musical or something that wasn’t aiming for Oscar bait, I’d fully agree with you. But Jackman was swinging for the fences with this one and story structure, character development, good editing, need to happen and they were all failed in this movie.

Greg: If you reproduce this for the Broadway stage, with the intent of targeting 25-year-olds and under, you don’t get something very different than what came on the big screen.

Chris: I don’t see how this could ever work on stage. It would have to be extensively truncated which doesn’t usually work well. Just look at Frozen.

Greg: Can we get back to the soundtrack for a second? The soundtrack has not one, not two, not three, but four show-stopping songs (A Million Dreams, Rewrite the Stars, Never Enough, From Now On). And yes, ‘Never Enough’ makes zero sense in the context of the movie. But the main reason I wish I saw Greatest Showman in the theaters was to see ‘Rewrite the Stars’ in the theater; I think my jaw would have dropped seeing the trapeze action in the final chorus.

Chris: I need to bring Rachel into this, I know she has some opinions.

Rachel Charniak (Guest Writer, OnStage Blog): Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg. Let’s discuss the soundtrack. There is no variety to the music in The Greatest Showman.  Individually, the songs are all decent, but none of them stand apart from the others and it’s hard to distinguish them from each other. 

And as far as Rewrite the Stars, I would have enjoyed it more if I believed Efron’s and Zendaya’s romance for one second. It was so forced and unnecessary.

Greg: Rachel, you’re telling me you didn’t like Rewrite the Stars?? Seriously?

Rachel:…………….it was decent.

Greg: I’ll take it. But let’s get back to the musical. You didn’t like this, like at all?

Rachel: I just didn’t find the musical interesting. The story of The Greatest Showman would have been much more developed and intriguing if greater attention was paid to everyone in P.T. Barnum’s show, and not just P.T. Barnum. The characters in the circus are very two-dimensional and the audience doesn’t know much about any of them; other than whatever attributes they possess that make them different.

Chris: The biggest problem with the movie is that it’s trying to cover too much too quickly and doesn’t build anything significant with the characters to make us care about any of them. If they centered on one part of Barnum’s life rather than trying to cover almost all of it, you’d get something more focused with more consistent music.

The film is also horribly miscast. God love her but Michelle Williams was completely wrong for the role and if they were going to dub Rebecca Furguson, why not just cast an actress that can actually sing. Her role is so insignificant, they could have cast a barely known Broadway actress and been fine with it.

Greg: To me, if half the soundtrack stays with the audience after it ends, the movie musical succeeded. Is it a low bar? I guess, but ultimately, the goal of a movie musical is for the music to engage the audience long after the performance ends.

Chris, you have the last word:

Chris: To me, if you’re someone who can completely turn off your brain at noticing glaring flaws in a movie and just have fun, this is a great experience for you. But the film’s historical accuracy problems, uneven performances, and strange editing choices interrupt my viewing experience. This movie, under a more experienced director and a tighter script, could have been quite something.