In a sentence:
The fake origin story of P.T Barnum is met by a thunderous storm of 'who cares', with scattered applause of 'why do I care'."
Awesome choreography.
The duet with Jackman (who is the only reason to care about this movie or character) and Efron in the bar is incredible. Also the ringleader jackets are awesome.
The singing was...fine, but it made me appreciate Les Mis all the more with the "live" singing.
The movie sells you a lie on Barnum's life, which okay, but it's not a particularly high-stakes or interesting one. It's so bright and chipper that when things get, ahem, dark, the best I could muster was "Aww, look, they're trying."
Curiously, this movie had a lot of the same problems Skull Island had - too many characters that they want me to care about, but this is a lot worse because this is a plot and character driven story, and there's no character to these people. And I'm not watching only for a particular actor this time so this felt like a real flashy ... thing. Filled with a mix of impressive and weak one liners.
The 'freaks' get the short end of the stick, in universe and for the actors. Out of fifteen people, only two of them are featured "prominently", I use that term very loosely, and i'm not even sure why there are so many when the two we "focus" on have nothing else to them besides "I'm a freak."
Everyone just has one bullet-point trope of a character, so I don't care about any of them. Some of them don't even have that.
Why is Zendaya's character a 'freak'? Because she's mixed?
Why is the lady (Rebecca Ferguson) miming like her life depended on it furious that she's just another one of Barnum's acts?
Some of the songs are worth it - The Other Side and Never Enough in particular. And some do have inklings, good lines and phrases, but as a whole many of them are not fabulous.
This needed to be rated PG-13 and a lot more darkness to have kept my attention.
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