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"Without promotion, something terrible happens...nothing!" - attributed to Phineas Taylor Barnum

"The  Greatest  Showman," directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey , is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul , who composed the songs for " La La Land ," as well as the current Broadway hit  Dear Evan Hansen . The film is made for the whole family to enjoy, and so it leaves out many of the darker elements (explored in the 1980 Broadway musical  Barnum , music by Cy Coleman ). This is a difficult tightrope to walk, but credit is due to Gracey, a perfectly cast Hugh Jackman , and the entire cast, who play this story in the spirit in which it was written (by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon ). "The  Greatest  Showman" positions itself as a story celebrating diversity, and the importance of embracing all kinds. 

There are those who will see this as a rose-colored-glasses view of what was a pretty exploitive situation. But in a 19th and early 20th century context, the circus and then vaudeville were welcoming places where those who had skills or who were rejected by society could find a home. Barnum put "misfit toys" onstage, saying, in essence, "Aren't they amazing?” (all while filling his pockets. For more thoughts on P.T. Barnum's barely acknowledged influence on American culture author Trav S.D.'s 2005 lecture at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, CT  is a good place to start.) Cary Grant , who had a harsh poor childhood, got his start as a tumbler in a vaudeville troupe. Years later he described his revelatory first visit to the Bristol Hippodrome:

"The  Saturday  matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that’s when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved."

That's what "The  Greatest  Showman" captures.

The film starts with the title song "The  Greatest  Show," a show-stopper with repetitive thumping percussion (reminiscent of Queen's ferocious "We Will Rock You"). Hugh Jackman—in red impresario's coat and top hat—takes us on a dazzling tour, with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey keeping the movements fluid, and all the actions connected, plunging you into the center ring. The whole number comes from the brazen heart of showbiz:  Make it interesting! Give 'em something to look at! Make sure you reach the cheap seats!  Barnum croons seductively, "Just surrender cuz you feel the feeling taking over!" I obeyed without reservation.

During the next number, "A Million Dreams" the young and poor Barnum (Ellis Rubin) befriends a well-bred little girl named Charity Hallett ( Skylar Dunn ), and they dream of creating their own destiny. This is the first time in "The  Greatest  Showman" where a character stops speaking and starts to sing instead; the segue is gracefully handled, setting up the artificial device early on. If you don't set up that trope with confidence, it makes it look like you're embarrassed to be doing a musical. By the end of the song, the little boy has become Hugh Jackman and the little girl has become Michelle Williams , leaping and twirling across the rooftop of their tenement, bed sheets on the line billowing to the beat. 

After struggling to establish himself, Barnum launches out on his own, creating a theatre in the heart of New York City. He gathers together people with special talents as well as those with physical abnormalities (a giant, a bearded lady, Siamese twins, a dwarf—who would eventually be known as General Tom Thumb, Barnum's first "breakout star"). The "audition" sequence is extremely tricky, but the tone is set by Jackman's inclusive delight at the parade of humanity before him. It's a moment when ignored people are for the first time really  seen .

Lettie Lutz, the "bearded lady," played by Tony-nominee Keala Settle, with a powerhouse voice, is one of the first to come on board. Settle's performance—her first major role onscreen—is one of the many keys to why "The  Greatest  Showman" is so effective. She understands the spirit of the project, and you watch her transformation from cringing shame to fearless Diva. Her anthemic "This Is Me" is one of the emotional centers of the film. Barnum's business partner is playwright and society boy Phillip Carlyle ( Zac Efron ), with snobby parents who are not only horrified at his "slumming,” but also at his romance with an African-American trapeze artist (Zendaya) who sports a pompadour of cotton-candy pink hair. Their love story, as presented, is tender, pained, and sweet.

Rebecca Ferguson plays Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," whom Barnum took on a whirlwind concert tour through America It was his entryway into "polite" society. Jenny Lind's power ballad "Never Enough" makes you understand why Barnum, backstage, falls in love with her instantly, throwing his marriage into crisis. Ferguson may be lip-synching to Loren Allred's breathtaking vocals, but it is her performance that carries. 

Ashley Wallen choreographed the numbers and there are many innovative moments, where she uses the outer environment to inform the movements of the characters. In " The Other Side ," Barnum convinces a reticent Carlyle to join the circus, and as he sings, the bartender puts down shot glasses, swipes the bar with a cloth, all as accents to the beat. The real standout, however, is "Rewrite the Stars," the love song between Efron and Zendaya,taking place in the empty circus tent, when she flies on the trapeze far above him, and he tries to climb up the ropes to meet her. Up, down, they both go, sometimes coming together, dangling above the ground, or sweeping in a wide circle together around the periphery of the tent. It is a moment when the film—every element onscreen—merges and transforms into pure emotion. This is what a musical can do like no other artform. 

One of the deep pleasures of "The  Greatest  Showman" is you don't have to grade the singing and dancing on a curve, as was necessary with "La La Land" (or, further back, to " Chicago ," where quick cuts hid Richard Gere's lack of tap dancing skills.) Hugh Jackman, with his powerful high baritone, got his start in musicals, performing in productions in Melbourne, and then in a hugely acclaimed revival of Oklahoma! in the West End. He won a Tony Award for his performance as Peter Allen in  The Boy From Oz  and has hosted the Tony Awards three times. He is an old-fashioned triple-threat. Film fans may know him mainly as "Wolverine," and there's nothing wrong with that, but once upon a time a song-and-dance man like Hugh Jackman's could sing and dance his way through mainstream Hollywood. He's unleashed here.

So, too, is Zac Efron, who also got his start because he could sing and dance in the phenom that was "High School Musical." His career has morphed into something rather unique, with titles like "Hairspray," "Neighbors," and a hilarious small part in this year's " The Disaster Artist ." He has something that cannot be manufactured, although many try, and that is old-school movie star charisma. Add to that a beautiful voice, plus dancing skills, plus a surprisingly ironic sense of humor, and he's got the full package. It's thrilling to see him in a big splashy musical. He's very much at home. 

Michelle Williams, with anachronistically long blonde hair, has a strong clear voice, and there's something exhilarating about how she tosses herself into thin air, knowing Jackman will catch her. In what could be a thankless "wet blanket wife" part, Williams adds a spunky sense of adventure, showing us the kind of woman who would say "No" to a ladylike society-wife life, and fling herself into the unknown with her man. 

The timing of this release is interesting. On May 21, 2017, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus folded up its tent for good, after 146 years of uninterrupted operation. Rocked by controversy due to criticisms of exploitation and animal abuse, they retired the elephant acts in 2016, but it was too late. Barnum was dogged by criticisms from the beginning. Many of the "acts" were fakes. Barnum actually didn't say the quote most associated with him ("There's a sucker born every minute") but he might as well have said it and his critics despised him for the assumption about popular entertainment and the regular folk who enjoy it. But in the film, Barnum, with a dazzling smile, explains to a skeptical journalist, "People come to my show for the pleasure of being hoodwinked." 

I was hoodwinked by "The  Greatest  Showman." And it was indeed a pleasure. Ringling Brothers may have closed up shop, but Barnum lives on.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Greatest Showman (2017)

139 minutes

Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum

Zac Efron as Phillip Carlyle

Michelle Williams as Charity Barnum

Rebecca Ferguson as Jenny Lind

Zendaya as Anne Wheeler

Fredric Lehne as Mr. Hallett

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as WD Wheeler

Paul Sparks as James Gordon Bennett

• Michael Gracey
• Jenny Bicks
• Bill Condon
• Justin Paul

Cinematography

• Seamus McGarvey
• Joe Hutshing

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“The Greatest Showman” by Michael Gracey Essay (Movie Review)

Characterization, plot and structure, originality, visual presentation, works cited.

One of the great expectations of 2017, ‘The Great Showman’ received the majority of mixed reviews. Although it was generally positively accepted by spectators and even received some awards, not all critical reviews found positive commentaries for the plot, director, and the movie as a whole (Travers; Lawson; Collin).

Directed by Michael Gracey, the film is a biographical drama and a musical at the same time. It presents the story of how show business was born. In fact, the movie is a story of a visionary who created an amazing spectacle and became famous worldwide. The story begins with depicting the main character, Phineas Taylor Barnum, as a young boy who helps his father working as a tailor. He gets acquainted with a girl named Charity. Although her farther forbids him to come to the girl, they remain friends and marry when they grow older. Later, Barnum works for a trading company until it is closed. He attempts to work for himself and takes a loan to open the museum of oddities, but this idea fails. Still, he continues searching for unique people and renames his show as “P.T. Barnum’s Circus” that performs in America and abroad and becomes successful.

The main character of the movie is a penniless but ambitious young man Phineas Taylor Barnum. His story is that of a man who made himself and achieved everything he desired. His beloved wife, Charity, is another significant character. She is a support for her husband and a keeper of their family. Phillip Carlyle, a playwright, is a character that brought in new ideas to Barnum’s Circus and their cooperation took the show higher level. On the whole, the acting of characters is good.

The plot is not too complicated and quite predictable, which can be considered a weakness of the movie. Still, unexpected turns are not characteristic of musicals. The typical structure is followed. The film opens with character presentation, then the plot develops to the climax, and the final scene brings the movie to the end.

The dialogues are well-written. The conversations are logical and sound natural. However, the major dialogue is found in songs. Some critics claim they are too simple, but still songs in the movie are emotional and suit the scenes where they are used (Hann). Moreover, ‘The Greatest Showman’ was nominated for Oscar for these songs. Thus, music is a strong point of the film.

The movie is sometimes characterized as “a good old-fashioned cornball PG musical,” which does not contribute to its genre originality (Gleiberman). Still, the plot itself attracted spectators and thus has a certain share of originality.

The scenes are both well-played and well-shot. Still, there is some confusion in places where songs enter the plot. Nevertheless, the sequence of scenes is logical and represents the story well. Also, lighting is a significant element of the scenes because it underlines the difference between the show and life.

Critics wonder why the movie became so popular with spectators (Goodman). Still, its visual presentation is perfect and contributes to the plot development. There is enough of cooperation and dialogue between the characters. On the whole, despite many critical reviews, the movie is of great entertainment value because spectators appreciated the plot, acting, and the show.

Collin, Robbie. “The Greatest Showman Review: Hugh Jackman’s Sanitised PT Barnum Musical Isn’t Freaky Enough.” The Telegraph . 2017. Web.

Gleiberman, Owen. “Film Review: ‘The Greatest Showman.” Variety . 2017. Web.

Goodman, Stephanie. “What’s So Great about ‘The Greatest Showman’? The New York Times . 2018. Web.

Hann, Michael. “The Greatest Showman was derided by critics. So why has its soundtrack shot straight to No 1? The Guardian . 2018. Web.

Lawson, Richard. “The Greatest Showman Review: A Faux-Inspiring Musical Than Earns an Uneasy Smile.” Vanity Fair . 2017. Web.

Travers, Peter. “Review: ‘The Greatest Showman’ Is ‘a Shrill Blast of Nothing.” Rolling Stone . 2017. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, June 13). "The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-greatest-showman-movie-by-michael-gracey/

""The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey." IvyPanda , 13 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/the-greatest-showman-movie-by-michael-gracey/.

IvyPanda . (2022) '"The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey'. 13 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. ""The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey." June 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-greatest-showman-movie-by-michael-gracey/.

1. IvyPanda . ""The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey." June 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-greatest-showman-movie-by-michael-gracey/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""The Greatest Showman" by Michael Gracey." June 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-greatest-showman-movie-by-michael-gracey/.

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'The Greatest Showman': Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2017-12-20T08:01:00+00:00

Hugh Jackman stars as 19th century entertainer P.T. Barnum in this musical extravaganza

Source: Twentieth Century Fox

The Greatest Showman

Dir: Michael Gracey. US. 2017. 105mins

The Greatest Showman tells the story of P.T. Barnum, a 19th century entertainer born of modest means who longed to be accepted by the upper crust of society, but this strained musical is content to play to the cheap seats. Earnest in the extreme and armed with lethal amounts of razzle-dazzle, the feature debut of commercial director Michael Gracey is an all-out assault of sentiment, pop songs and dime-store psychology that’s somewhat held together by Hugh Jackman’s likably shameless portrayal of this striving charmer. 

Working his bulletproof grin and sparkly eyes to maximum effect, Jackson has no problem with the overblown showstoppers

Arriving in US theatres December 20 and the UK a week later, this Fox release will hope to capitalize on Jackman’s appeal, which will be amplified by the presence of Zac Efron, Michelle Williams and Rebecca Ferguson among the supporting cast. Not terribly dissimilar from the crowd-pleasing La La Land ($446 million worldwide), which also focused on characters torn between career aspirations and domesticity, The Greatest Showman stands as one of the most viable counterprogramming options to The Last Jedi — although it will face direct competition from Pitch Perfect 3 .

Inspired by the life of Phineas Taylor Barnum, who masterminded must-see spectacles involving human curiosities and circus acts, the movie follows as lowly commoner Barnum (Jackman) wins the heart of well-to-do local beauty Charity (Williams) and raises a family in New York; all the while holding onto the dream of making his name as an impresario. Finding fortune by creating a show featuring bizarre individuals, like a bearded lady and conjoined twins, the disrespect he feels from the city’s elite provokes him to team up with Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron), a snobby theatre producer who becomes his ambassador to high society.

Subtlety has no place in The Greatest Showman , which tends to hammer every element of its story right through the audience’s skull. Whether it’s the preaching of inclusiveness — eventually, Barnum realizes he shouldn’t exploit his performers’ oddities — or the brash, melodramatic songs that litter the narrative, Gracey goes for unabashed emotion in the hopes that it will make his themes more resonant.

Oscar-winner composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lyrics for La La Land , turn in a collection of songs that runs the gamut from pleasantly sappy to blandly percussive. In general, the tunes don’t enlarge or enrich the characters but, instead, reiterate their basic drives. That’s particularly frustrating in the case of Barnum, who is meant to be a complicated, ambitious man chasing the approval of those who look down their nose at his freak-show attractions — all the while neglecting his loyal wife and adorable daughters.

Working his bulletproof grin and sparkly eyes to maximum effect, the Tony-winning Jackson has no problem with the busy choreography and overblown showstoppers, but the film doesn’t have the guts to really explore the character’s inherent darkness. Gracey makes sure this benign musical never wades too far into murky moral waters, and therefore Barnum’s flirtation with infidelity — in the form of the beguiling Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson), who represents the finer things in life — lacks genuine stakes or pathos. As one might expect, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and production designer Nathan Crowley drape The Greatest Showman in eye-popping glitz, adding to the film’s knowing artificiality.

With all that said, the film clatters along with enough gusto that it’s easy to tap into its mindlessness. For every caffeinated musical number, a relatively sedate sequence — such as one involving Carlyle and a pretty trapeze artist (Zendaya) who fall in love while serenading each other and twirling on a rope — hits all the sweet spots of a romantic song-and-dance movie moment.

Ferguson registers strongest among the supporting cast as a sophisticated artist who tempts Barnum away from his home life. (Loren Allred provides the character’s heavenly singing.) But the rest of the ensemble struggles in thin roles, although Williams does what she can to make Barnum’s ineffectual wife a smidge more interesting. Williams sings Charity’s heartsick ballad herself, and the actress’ vulnerable voice adds poignancy to a character who realizes her dreamer of a husband may be seduced by his latest obsession.

Production companies: TSG Entertainment, Laurence Mark Productions, Chernin Entertainment

Worldwide distribution: Twentieth Century Fox, www.foxmovies.com

Producers: Laurence Mark, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping

Executive producers: James Mangold, Donald J. Lee, Jr., Tonia Davis

Screenplay: Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, story by Jenny Bicks

Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey

Production design: Nathan Crowley

Editors: Tom Cross, Robert Duffy, Joe Hutshing, Michael McCusker, Jon Poll, Spencer Susser  

Music: John Debney & Joseph Trapanese

Website: www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-greatest-showman

Main Cast: Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Keala Settle

• United States

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‘the greatest showman’: film review.

Hugh Jackman plays P.T. Barnum in 'The Greatest Showman,' a family musical inspired by the life of the legendary 19th-century ringmaster, which also features Zac Efron, Michelle Williams and Zendaya.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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The sawdust and sequins are laid on thick, the period flashbulbs pop and the champagne flows in The Greatest Showman , yet this ersatz portrait of American big-top tent impresario P.T. Barnum is all smoke and mirrors, no substance. It hammers pedestrian themes of family, friendship and inclusivity while neglecting the fundaments of character and story. First-time director Michael Gracey exposes his roots in commercials and music videos by shaping a movie musical whose references go no further back than Baz Luhrmann . And despite a cast of proven vocalists led with his customary gusto by Hugh Jackman , the interchangeably generic pop songs are so numbingly overproduced they all sound like they’re being performed off-camera.

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First, a word about the music: The songs are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a fast-rising team who wrote lyrics for the tunes in La La Land ; they composed the charmingly retro score for the musical adaptation of A Christmas Story and penned the affecting emo balladry in the Tony-winning Broadway smash, Dear Evan Hansen . Clearly, these guys can write, and in a variety of genres.

Release date: Dec 20, 2017

The mandate of Pasek and Paul with this long-gestating project, however, appears to have been to come up with accessible pop songs that drag the mid-19th-century story into the here and now. One number after another follows the same derivative template — from the hushed start through the first wave of emphatic instrumentation, building into an all-out explosion of triumphal, extra-loud chorus expressing minor variations on standard-issue themes of self-affirmation. They all sound like bland imitations of chart hits by Katy Perry or Demi Lovato or Kelly Clarkson. Catchy, like Chlamydia.

What the personality-free songs seldom do though is advance the story or deepen our connection to the characters, which means they fail in the most basic job requirement of musical numbers. I started actively dreading the arrival of another song, never a good feeling in a movie musical.

In addition to various screen treatments, the colorful life of Phineas Taylor Barnum was the subject of a 1980 circus-styled Broadway musical called Barnum — not a first-rate show but an entertaining one and a robust star vehicle, in which Cy Coleman’s signature strutting melodies were ideally suited to a central character who was all about dazzling presentation. With his effortless charisma, jaunty swagger and winning smile, Jackman was born to play that role. But like everyone else here, he’s given too little space to inhabit, let alone create a three-dimensional character. Mostly, he’s a handsome prop in a gaudy spectacle that’s no more real than the CG lions leaping about in the finale.

Scripted by veteran TV writer Jenny Bicks ( Sex and the City ) and Bill Condon from a story by Bicks , the movie opens with a hint of Great Expectations . The cheeky young Phineas (Ellis Rubin) accompanies his tailor father (Will Swenson) to the palatial home of well-heeled client Mr. Hallett (Fredric Lehne ), a joyless snob who doesn’t take kindly to the lowly tradesman’s boy flirting with his precious daughter Charity ( Skylar Dunn).

Exposition is swept up in a single song, “A Million Dreams,” in which Phineas and Charity steal childhood moments together in a ghostly abandoned mansion, before blossoming into teenagers. Along the way, P.T. is orphaned. Michelle Williams steps in as the grown-up Charity, while Jackman’s Barnum finds employment with the railroad and returns to claim her hand in marriage. They celebrate by dancing on what looks like a backlot rooftop amid curtains of laundry, against a painted sky; before the song is over, they have two lovely daughters. It’s all so breathless and giddy that instead of flesh-and-blood protagonists, we get familiar cardboard cutouts — the plucky poor kid propelled by drive and imagination, and the self-possessed rich girl who answers only to her heart.

After his initial attempt to draw crowds to a museum of wax figures, taxidermy and assorted other curios fails to take off, Barnum seizes on the idea of authentic human oddities. The real P.T. Barnum’s famed exhibits included such exploitative attractions as the African-American slave Joice Heth, whom the impresario advertised as the 161-year-old “mammy” of George Washington. In this sweetened, semi-fictionalized version, he’s like Tod Browning by way of Mother Teresa, collecting “freaks” unloved by their own parents and welcoming them into a surrogate family where they could feel less alone.

This is territory that co-writer Condon explored more satisfyingly in his unjustly short-lived 2014 reworking of the failed Broadway musical Side Show . But the warmth and unity of that community of carnival outsiders are missing here. (This might have been a very different movie had Condon directed.) Only the pint-sized Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey) and “bearded lady” Lettie Lutz ( Keala Settle) get significant dialogue or screen time. The rest — a giant, a fat man, Siamese twins, a hairy “dog boy,” an albino and other random exotics that could pass for contemporary Brooklyn hipsters of indeterminate gender — are employed like extras in a Lady Gaga video. That’s also pretty much the model for Ashley Wallen’s aggressive choreography — all power stomps and furious turns, with scarcely a moment of grace.

Amid this overcrowded blur of sketchily drawn characters, a second couple materializes — a youthful, pretty pair to get the preteens swooning. Phillip Carlyle ( Zac Efron) is an upper-class New York theatrical producer roped in by Barnum to bring legitimacy to his business endeavors. Phillip falls in love at first sight with Anne Wheeler ( Zendaya ), half of an African-American duo of sibling trapeze artists. The frowning of high society on a romance that crosses racial lines causes some awkward hesitation on Phillip’s part, but from the moment these two do aerial rope tricks together while singing “Rewrite the Stars,” their fate is sealed.

Conflict, such as it is, comes in predictable form from the damning coverage of starchy theater critic James Bennett (Paul Sparks), so turned off by Barnum’s brand of popular entertainment he calls it a “circus,” which sticks; from an unruly mob of potato-faced Irish bigots, enraged by the Oddities; and from a threat to Barnum’s marriage, when he sets out to extend the fame of celebrated opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) from Europe to America.

This being a musical unshackled from its time period, Jenny of course sings yearning power pop with the same processed, disconnected sound as everyone else. Nonetheless, she brings tears to Barnum’s eyes and earns Bennett’s respect. And this being a family film without even a flicker of sexual tension, the interactions of Phineas and Jenny while on tour remain quite chaste, despite the “Swedish Nightingale” declaring her love for him.

The fact that none of this ever acquires much dramatic urgency, even when the circus is torched and lives hang in the balance, is no fault of the cast. The actors do what they can with roles that are barely more than outlines and pre-programmed character arcs. The busy presence of six credited editors might also have something to do with it, suggesting that the story has been cut to ribbons in favor of the assaultive song-and-dance interludes.

Jackman seems incapable of giving an unappealing performance, but there’s just no texture to his role. Barnum early on owns the label “Prince of Humbugs,” literally wearing it on a hat, which indicates the real subject’s renown for hype and fakery. But the worst we see him do is pad an already corpulent man to make him larger, or put a massively tall guy on stilts to, ahem, heighten the effect. The script so sanitizes and simplifies the flamboyant showman that you wonder how anyone could possibly object to what he’s selling.

Ferguson has a tender moment or two, but the roles of Williams and Efron are on the thin side. Of the secondary characters, Zendaya registers strongest, bringing touching sensitivity to her handful of scenes, and looking fabulous in her pink performance wig. Broadway recruit Settle, with her leather lungs, also makes the most of her screen time, leading a big anthemic number about celebrating your uniqueness called “This is Me,” which is basically “I Am What I Am” and “Born This Way” put through a blender.

Director Gracey , cinematographer Seamus McGarvey , production designer Nathan Crowley and costumer Ellen Mirojnick douse everything in such a sparkly modern gloss that the historical locations might as well be studio sets and the story of an American showbiz pioneer becomes just another razzle-dazzle cliche. This is a movie that works way too hard at its magic, continually prompting us with insistent music cues to feel excitement that just isn’t there. If P.T. Barnum had delivered entertainment this flat to his public, the name would have long been forgotten.

Production companies: Laurence Mark, Chernin Entertainment Distributor: Fox Cast: Hugh Jackman , Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya , Keala Settle, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Natasha Liu Bordizzo , Paul Sparks, Sam Humphrey, Austyn Johnson, Cameron Seely Director: Michael Gracey Screenwriters: Jenny Bicks , Bill Condon; story by Bicks Producers: Laurence Mark, Peter Chernin , Jenno Topping Executive producers: James Mangold , Donald J. Lee Jr., Tonia Davis Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey Production designer: Nathan Crowley Costume designer: Ellen Mirojnick Music: John Debney , John Trapanese Songs: Benj Pasek , Justin Paul Editors: Tom Cross, Robert Duffy, Joe Hutshing , Michael McCusker , Jon Poll, Spencer Susser Choreographer: Ashley Wallen Casting: Bernard Telsey , Tiffany Little Canfield

Rated PG, 105 minutes

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The Greatest Showman Movie Review

This essay will provide a review of the musical film “The Greatest Showman.” It will discuss the movie’s portrayal of P.T. Barnum’s life, its musical and visual presentation, thematic elements, and its reception among audiences and critics. More free essay examples are accessible at PapersOwl about Film Analysis.

How it works

The Greatest Showman by Michael Gracey is a biography/musical of P.T Barnum’s life. The film came out December,20 2017 and made $435 million at the box office even though their budget was $84 million. The main stars in this movie are Michelle Williams (Charity Hallett), Zendaya Coleman (Anne Wheeler), Zac Efron (Phillip Carlyle) and Hugh Jackman (P.T Barnum).

Two facts about this movie is that the movie was filmed in New York and the production company is TSG Entertainment (Which is responsible for Kingsman and Deadpool.

) Interesting facts about this movie is that this is Michael Gracey’s directorial debut. This movie was Hugh Jackman’s dream project. The characters Phillip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler are fictionalized, and their love story was fictionalized. The movie won a Golden Globe for best song (This Is Me.) The last interesting fact I must share with you is during when the movie was green-lit, Hugh Jackman had surgery on his nose to remove skin cancer. He had 80 stitches and was told by his doctor to not sing. Hugh followed the doctor’s directions until it came to the last song (From Now On) where he chose to sing. Halfway though, he realized his nose was bleeding.

Owen Gleiberman in his review of The Greatest Showman said that The Greatest Showman is a good old-fashioned cornball PG musical that is also a scintillatingly flashy — and woke! — immersion in up-to-the-minute razzmatazz. I agree with Owen. It’s a great and sensational movie because of the great themes/hidden messages, great songs and the choreography.

As the movie opens, the audience sees P.T Barnum imaging he is the ring-leader of a highly successful circus and he is also hearing applause from the imaginary audience.

The movie then flashes back to P.T Barnum’s childhood in which he was poor and lonely. He and his father Philo (Will Swenson) are working as personal tailors to the Hallett family. Young P.T Barnum falls in love with Charity Hallett even though she must go to finishing school. Young Barnum assures her, they won’t be separated. (Enter the song: A Million Dreams in which we see Young Barnum spinning a wishing machine). Young Barnum sees his father get ill and then die. (In which we see him take his father’s hat.) He is now alone, homeless and hungry. A “freak” ends up handing him an apple.

Midway through the song, we see the adult Barnum saying to Charity’s father “Sir, I know I don’t come from much, but I will take care of your daughter and I will give her a life as grand as this one.” In response Charity’s dad says “Fine! Marry my pretty daughter, you gutter trash! But she’ll be back once she realizes you’ll never be rich and successful and part of New York Society!”

We see the Barnum’s dancing on the roof-top of their dilapidated Manhattan apartment as all their bedsheets dry on the clothesline. We then see the Barnum’s two daughters. In a moment of bliss, Charity tells Barnum, “I don’t mind not having much money. Let’s just be a happy family.” “Never!” Barnum replies. “I’m going to buy a huge building on the other side of town and start a museum filled with weird shit.” He gets the money and sets up his museum, but no one visits. In his head, Barnum remembers that kind person who gave him an apple once and thinks to fill his circus with “freaks.” We see him auditioning the freaks and getting giddy with glee. Thanks to his “freaks” he gets rich very fast and buys a mansion that him and Charity played at when they were young. Despite their sudden wealth, no one respects the Barnum’s!

Enter in Phillip Carlyle who is a successful playwright and son of Manhattan socialites, to legitimize his business. Phillip agrees and takes a 10% cut. Within seconds, he falls in love with Anne. Phillip takes Barnum and the freaks to meet Queen Victoria in London. After meeting with Queen Victoria, who loves the freaks.

Phineas and Phillip meet Jenny Lind (played by Rebecca Ferguson), a famous singer known as the Swedish Nightingale. They ask her to perform in New York in order to class up his entertainment empire, and she agrees. Meanwhile, Phillip wants to hold Anne’s hand in public, but his parents don’t approve of him seeing an African American woman, so he resists the urge. At the glamorous afterparty, Barnum toasts Jenny to a room of rich socialites. So, when the freaks try to barge in and drink champagne with everyone, he gets nervous and tells them to skedaddle. They belong in coach, not first class! And here comes “This Is Me,”

Barnum decides to take Jenny on tour around the country and leaves Philip behind to manage the freaks. Despite the awful treatment by Phineas, the freaks end up finding Barnum at a bar and let him know they don’t want him to give up on his dream. While performing “The Greatest Show” once again, Barnum literally passes the baton to Phillip and says he has some business to attend to. He jumps on top of an elephant and rides it to the Met to meet up with his family.

The Greatest Showman is a movie that features great themes/hidden messages. The 5 greatest themes/hidden messages are that family is everything/true love does exist/simplicity equals happiness/follow your heart and embrace your weird side.

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The Greatest Showman Review

26 Dec 2017

The Greatest Showman

A year ago, La La Land was hailed as the saviour of the movie musical, but it only went so far, aping the look but not the tone of the old classics. The Greatest Showman , on the other hand, is an unabashed throwback, consciously modelling itself on the likes of Carousel and The Greatest Show On Earth , but adding modern pop tunes and a whole heap of CGI. It races along at a breakneck pace and occasionally stumbles into mawkishness, but is carried along by Hugh Jackman’s total commitment and some appallingly catchy songs.

Carried along by Hugh Jackman’s total commitment and some appallingly catchy songs.

Our hero is Phineas Taylor Barnum (Jackman), who we glimpse at the height of his circus fame before flashing back to a tough childhood on the streets — though he still manages to win the heart and hand of rich girl Charity (Williams). Dreaming of better times for them both, he cons his way into a bank loan and opens a wax museum, but when that threatens to go under he adds a collection of “unique individuals”: a bearded lady (the stunning Keala Settle), the diminutive Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey) and more. Success follows, but Barnum is still confined to the fringes of high society. So he gambles all he’s built on the “Swedish nightingale”, opera singer Jenny Lind (Ferguson), who hypnotises him and threatens his marriage, and a high-class tour of the country’s opera houses.

The film races through its plot so there’s more time to lavish on its big-production numbers, and it’s here that director Michael Gracey’s comfort with tech is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, his meticulously planned dazzle really does glimmer with colour and flash, but he leans a little too heavily on the CG to stitch together impossible camera angles, create trapeze wires that don’t obey the laws of physics at all and add in animal accompaniment, in a way that sometimes amplifies artificiality in an already tall tale. Perhaps that’s in keeping with his subject — Barnum did, after all, put his giant on stilts and stuff the shirt of the “world’s fattest man”, so perhaps too much seemed like just enough.

Still, the story’s more or less just a hook for, firstly, a succession of songs by Dear Evan Hansen ’s Pasek and Paul, and they largely deliver. There are four or five absolute bangers here, and you can count on at least one sticking in your head for a week or more. And secondly, it allows us to watch a brash, big-hearted, blindly optimistic turn from Hugh Jackman as the unsinkable Barnum himself. It’s ultimately about that hoariest of clichés — learning what’s really important in life — but it’s delivered with such sincerity and heart that it’s hard to mind.

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The Greatest Showman Reviews

Give in. Roll up. Sing along.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

The vivid cinematography by Seamus McGarvey and the exquisite costumes by Ellen Mirojnick capture the magic of Barnum’s circus and give the picture an attractive period feel.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2022

Quite incongruously, The Greatest Showman suggests that Barnum is a heroic figure, a woke entertainer and family man, who also capitalized on animal suffering and the veritable prostitution of human oddity.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 16, 2022

The movie is a big, loud explosion of color and excitement but one the party's over, somebody's got to clean it all up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 11, 2022

So nice, so cheerful, its characters so indefatigable that it's impossible to hate.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 24, 2021

It's a rollercoaster of story and music that occasionally moves too fast but delivers enough thrills along the way to be worth the price of admission.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2021

A serious look at P.T. Barnum's life requires acknowledgment of the ways in which his success manifested. The Greatest Showman is therefore just as much of a fraud as he was.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 2, 2020

While one can fault this sugar-coated take on the Barnum character, it's hard to find fault with Jackman's portrayal of him.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 9, 2020

Hugh Jackman dazzles as circus tycoon P.T. Barnum in this criminally underrated biopic featuring a timeless Pasek & Paul songbook of "A Million Dreams" and "Never Enough."

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 3, 2020

It won't be classified as the best movie in the world (or musical for that matter) but it is easy to see why the appeal for the film has been infectious and unanimous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 26, 2020

A festive musical treat with an enchanting performance from Jackman and a feel-good soundtrack you'll be hunting down as soon as you leave the cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2020

What is said to be a 'celebration of humanity' lacks just that, using flair and manipulation instead.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 23, 2020

The Greatest Showman is a spectacular modern musical extravaganza in the classic Hollywood style.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2020

Thinking back on this film is giving me a headache. It is a frustrating mess, with much to mock. However, I do admit to being swept along with some of the musical numbers and circus scenes. Ultimately I have to accept that a large part of me enjoyed it.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2020

This movie does a solid job of presenting its story and providing a fantastic place for these new songs.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

This movie does still suffer from a lot of the same problems, musically, that La La Land did, where I can't understand a word that the chorus is saying.

Full Review | May 14, 2020

It had that magic of a musical... I don't know if I'd recommend it. It felt like it was peacocking me the whole time.

This isn't a subtle, finely tuned piece of art, this is cheery lunacy that revels in its attempt to call back on the positive musicals of the past.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 15, 2020

My question is, why not focus on the real facts by digging deeper? What a shame, not only to Barnum's character but also to Lind's.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2020

The Greatest Showman is so much fun. You got Hugh Jackman's contagious charisma, Zac Efron holding his own and Zendaya flying through the air with ease.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 22, 2020

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The Greatest Showman review – roll up, roll up, zone out

I magine Tod Browning’s 1932 pre-Code horror film Freaks asset-stripped by a third-rate Baz Luhrmann wannabe, the chilling refrain “one of us” sanitised into something closer to a soft-drink commercial tagline than a menace. Imagine a musical that, like its score, is all air-punching chorus and no verse; a featherlight film in which what meagre narrative there is unfolds in endless, oily musical montages. Imagine a film that replaces an emotional climax with a scene in which the main character rides an enormous CGI elephant covered in glitter. In fact, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to conjure up a film such as The Greatest Showman , which is an uninspired plod through the life of PT Barnum (Hugh Jackman). For all the skittish, pirouetting camera and sparkles, the characterisation is barely Lycra-deep and the magic that Barnum brought to his shows is lacking.

It is not entirely without redeeming features. An aerial song-and-dance sequence between slumming toff Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron) and trapeze artist Anne Wheeler (Zendaya) is a giddy joy. And Hugh Jackman is clearly having an absolute ball in the role. Still, it is hard to forgive a film that casts Michelle Williams in a key role but doesn’t give her the opportunity to do any actual acting.

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The Critical Sin of ‘The Greatest Showman’: It’s Defiantly Uncool

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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I just got back from seeing “ The Greatest Showman ” a second time, and found it to be every bit as enthralling as I did the first time — in some ways, even more so. It’s an enraptured, live-wire, old-school-with-a-kustom-makeover retro musical that takes you back to the feeling you had as a kid the first time you ever saw a movie that made you go “Wow!” Yet I realize that just by saying that, I have made myself sound faintly ridiculous. To call “The Greatest Showman” a movie that has gotten no respect would be to understate the royal kneecapping the critics have given it. I’m on a lonely island of enthusiasm here (though not an entirely isolated island: Stephanie Zacharek of Time and David Ehrlich of IndieWire have both signed on as “Greatest Showman” enthusiasts).

The critics have been naked in their hostility. “The Greatest Showman,” it has been declared, is a pile of wholesome conventional movie-lite squareness. The way the film, it is said, turns P.T. Barnum’s circus of human oddities into a freak-show cavalcade of identity politics, all standing tall to claim their pride and dignity (you go, Bearded Lady!), is a pious and sentimental 21st-century anachronism. The movie whitewashes Barnum himself, taking someone who was an exploitative profiteer and turning him into a saintly grinning maestro-with-a-dream played with rambunctious gusto by Hugh Jackman . And I haven’t even mentioned all that catchy Broadway dance pop, staged in music-video numbers that look like something out of a family-friendly version of “ Moulin Rouge !”

In reaction to these criticisms, I can only say: Yes, yes, yes, and yes . “The Greatest Showman” is, does, and commits each of those mortal cinematic sins. It’s an ultra-square movie. It salutes the Bearded Lady, Tom Thumb, and the rest as if they were members of some persecuted minority group united in a chorus of “What I Did for Love.” And if you’re looking for “reality,” you’d be better off saving your ticket money and spending 20 dutiful minutes perusing the P.T. Barnum page on Wikipedia.

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Yet the historical-accuracy point, which has been made by more than a few critics, raises a telling question. Namely: Who in God’s name goes to a kaleidoscopic musical about P.T. Barnum looking for a chronicle of the complex historical figure he really was? As someone who has often argued for greater reality in movies, I might feel differently if the film were some epic dramatic P.T. Barnum biopic. But it’s not. It has roughly the same relation to the P.T. Barnum story — glancing, affectionate, fanciful — as “Singin’ in the Rain” does to the history of the waning days of silent film. “The Greatest Showman” is unabashedly a concoction . But here’s the thing: It’s a passionate and bedazzling one, a gracefully crafted tall tale that glides by without belaboring a moment. It’s as if Baz Luhrmann went back in time and made a musical for MGM in the late ’40s.

Here, I think, is why the reviews have been so united in their hate. The points raised above can all be debated, but what the critics are really saying is what they’re not actually coming out and saying: that “The Greatest Showman” is fataly uncool. It’s a splashy but chaste PG revel, with the barest hint of a dark side. It’s like a Blue State musical made for an audience of Red State potluck geeks.

Yet on that score, it’s an entrancing romance-of-showbiz bauble, with songs so infectious they soar. “Moulin Rouge!,” for all its visionary passion, was laced with puckish irony, and “La La Land” embedded its sincerity in a heady look-we’re-making-a-musical! meta splendor. “The Greatest Showman” never gets within a country mile of irony. It serves up its wide-screen emotion in big, sincere slabs. And that, let’s just say it, is something that now makes certain people cringe.

The cool factor has bled into film criticism from pop-music criticism, where enthusiasm for uncool acts — like, say, Coldplay — is frowned upon, unless it’s positioned as some sort of semi-apologetic guilty pleasure. And you can feel the influence of the cool factor in the way that certain films that might once have been power players have now been tossed onto a slag heap of diminished respectability. “Darkest Hour,” starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, met with an early burst of acclaim, but it’s so straight-down-the-middle in its inspirational nobility that it began to be treated by the press as uncool. That’s why Oldman, once considered a lock for an Academy Award win, is no longer a lock; there’s no hipster quotient to his highly traditional bravura-under-latex performance. And a tastefully intelligent physical-deformity weeper hit like “Wonder,” which would once have been a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, now doesn’t even seem to be in the right ballpark. Even its box-office success doesn’t work for it. It’s hot…but it’s not cool.

I’m not saying these movies should be winning Oscars. But I’m taking note of a shift away from middlebrow taste on the part of the film-critic establishment that has now made itself part of the awards machine. When applied to a movie like “The Greatest Showman,” that anti-middlebrow fervor becomes a lethal dart. As a drama that expresses itself in joyful bursts of pop passion, “The Greatest Showman” is twice the movie that “Baby Driver” was, yet “Baby Driver,” for all its stitched-together faux-Tarantino overkill, was rhapsodized over as the coolest movie of the year. “The Greatest Showman” is one of the uncoolest, because it’s a wholehearted musical that’s neither kitschy nor ironic nor hip.

Yet audiences are responding to it. For a movie that started slow out of the gate, it enjoyed a surprisingly robust second weekend — a 73% jump in sales (from $8.8 to $15.2 million), which amounts to a record hold for a movie playing in over 3,000 theaters . That’s an indication that the word of mouth is creating some major ripples. I feel like I know why. It’s a picture with so much to savor, from the barroom drinking duet between Jackman and Zac Efron that’s a giddy tour de force of tossed shot glasses to the glory of Zendaya’s trapeze moves and the burnt-in hurt of her tears; from Rebecca Ferguson-with-the-voice-of-Loren Allred’s incandescent performance of “Never Enough” to the exquisite way that Jackman, in the last scene, throws away the line “The show must go on!” If you see “The Greatest Showman” with an open heart, I promise that the movie will sweep you up. You just won’t feel cool about it.

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Analysis of “The Greatest Showman”

The movie The Greatest Showman is a musical tale set in 19 th Century, New York. The main characters, Barnum and Charity, belonged to two different social classes. They became friends but Charity’s family does not approve of their relationship (Gracey et al., 2019). She is taken far from home while Barnum stays back helping his father with the cloth business. After Barnum’s father died, he is left languishing in poverty without a roof over his head. Years later Barnum marries Charity and together they start a family. Barnum struggles with his job that does not pay much but he still holds on to the dream of providing a better life for his wife and children. After losing the job, he starts his own theatre business by bringing together the town’s “misfits”. The business thrives and he can provide for his family. However, his aspirations continue to grow and at some point, he loses himself in his ventures. The main themes portrayed in the movie are love, acceptance, and diversity.

In the movie, Charity and Barnum are first introduced to the audience while in their middle childhood development stage. This stage is characterized by children from age eight to twelve years (Jewell et al., 2019). By this age, a child should be able to grasp the notion of time and money. They should also be able to interact socially with other children and adults. In the movie, Barnum is seen helping his father in trade. Charity, on the other hand, is being taught how ladies ought to behave and carry themselves in society. As the movie progresses, they turn into adolescents and then adults.

The main character, Barnum, is a poor young man struggling to be accepted. Charity’s parents did not approve of their friendship and they often hid to have fun. After his father’s death, he was left alone and at this point, he is often hungry, lonely, and depressed. He had to do whatever it took to get food and a place to sleep. There is a scene where he steals bread and is chased by the vendor. Barnum never abandoned his dream of finding his destiny or writing to his childhood friend who later becomes the love of his life. Barnum and Charity’s children are portrayed as loving and caring. They are socially active and sharp and take part in decision-making in the family. They also have a great relationship with their parents and other people they associate with.

The theory from the lesson material that best relates to the movie is Jean Piaget’s cognitive development. According to the theory, the experiences that children go through are their basis for learning. For instance, learning occurs through assimilation and accommodation and this forms the long-term development change. Piaget classified development into stages that are differentiated by age. The characters in the movie are categorized according to the concrete operational stage. This is where children acquire skills and learn how to apply them in their daily operations. As the movie starts, Charity and Barnum are learning different life skills. However, Barnum’s resilience is what propelled him to follow his destiny.

In conclusion, the movie The Greatest Showman follows the life of a young boy from his childhood into adulthood and how the challenges he faced influenced him in adulthood. An understanding of childhood development gives parents, teachers, and caregivers the necessary knowledge, understanding, and tools in dealing with children of any age. Jean Piaget’s theory comes in at this point to give a clear overview of the different developmental stages that characters such as Charity went through.

Gracey, M., Bicks, J., Condon, B., & Mark, L. (2017). The greatest showman . Twentieth Century Fox. Web.

Jewell, T., Gardner, T., Susi, K., Watchorn, K., Coopey, E., Simic, M., & Eisler, I. (2019). Attachment measures in middle childhood and adolescence: A systematic review of measurement properties. Clinical Psychology Review , 68 , 71-82. Web.

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The Greatest Showman Review. Essay on Circus Industry

Released in 2017, “The Greatest Showman” tells an exciting story of the origins of the circus industry and where it came from. The musical was directed by Michael Gracey, written by Bill Condon and Jenny Bicks, and included some of the most well-known actors and actresses: Hugh Jackman, Zendaya, and Zac Efron. The film used the perspectives of multiple characters to give the audience insight on how the events affected all of them. As a result, the audience was able to have an emotional connection to each character and the circumstances they are put through. The film had very great quality in many areas; the attention to detail was one factor that put “The Greatest Showman” at the top of the movies released that year. 

The movie follows the life journey of P.T. Barnum from childhood to adulthood. It shows his rags-to-riches experience and shares the important moments that shaped who he was and his thought process. As more characters are introduced, the movie begins to follow their life stories and experiences. Since the plot goes on to include the conflicts of all the characters, various topics and themes are addressed in the movie. Major topics include the struggles of relationships, love, and loyalty.

Not only are romantic relationships tested, but also family and friendships. The audience is shown that true happiness can be found from simplicity and that true love does truly exist. Another major topic included in the movie is diversity. The movie takes place in the 1850s- a time period where many people were mistreated for their differences. This is shown through the circus characters and variety of races who show the struggle people faced during this time. However, the film shows encourages that differences are not always bad and that they should be embraced. 

Musicals include the intriguing story line that movies do, while also adding in the elements of song and dance. “The Greatest Showman” changed the mood of the movie to match the events happening in the story line using colors, songs, and sounds. After watching the movie, I was left feeling happier and was able to forget about the stress of the day while focusing on the film. While there were many parts of the musical that stood out and where done very well, there were some that could have been better.

The singing and dancing were two things that stood out in the musical. These two elements were done very well and included small details that made them even better. In the songs, “The Other Side” and “The Greatest Show”, the writer of the music incorporated and emphasized sounds that might not have been audible to the audience underneath the rest of the music. However, this allowed the songs to have an authenticity and to give the audience the experience of being in the film. Another detail that was done very well was the use of colors for different moods.

This was shows through the vibrancy of the exciting scenes, such as the circus performances, and the darker color schemes for sadder scenes. The musical does address history and many of the problems relevant to the time but fails to tell the true story of P.T. Barnum and the development of the circus. The true story does not involve the same people of dramatic plot twists featured in the movie, which can give the audience a false idea as to what truly happened. However, the incorporation of these elements not found in the true historical account add more to the plot and make the film more interesting. 

“The Greatest Showman” is worth taking the time to watch to gain a deeper understanding of many of the struggles that were faced by people in the 1850s and to be entertained by the beautiful cinematography, dancing, and songs. Even though the musical includes elements that are not found in the real story of P.T. Barnum and his circus, the film does a fantastic job at creating an entertaining story that teaches many important and valuable lessons.

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Every Zendaya Role Ranked: ‘Challengers,’ ‘Dune,’ ‘Euphoria,’ and More

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This April sees Zendaya cross a milestone it honestly feels like she should have reached ages ago: a legitamite leading role in a theatrical film. The actor has been one of the biggest stars of Generation Z and a much hyped starlet for years now, and yet a quick glance at her Wikipedia page reveals a shockingly short resume.

The Oakland born star’s adult film career, after a childhood in the Disney Channel machine leading sitcoms like “Shake It Up” and “KC Undercover,” really only started in 2017, with a brief supporting turn in Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Opposite her eventual real-life boyfriend Tom Holland, she only had a scant 10 minutes or so of screentime as the sarcastic teen MJ — hardly a star is born moment, despite what the advertising for the film would have you expect.

Zendaya would reprise her role in future Spider-Man films, and her screentime increased with each installment. But the near blink-and-you’ll-miss-her nature of her “Homecoming” performance set a precedent for her career, which has seen her demonstrate a lot of potential with little real follow through. After her “Spider-Man” role, she showed up in 2017 theaters again to play a fairly minor supporting character in “The Greatest Showman.” In 2021, she appeared in the much hyped role of Chani in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” adaptation, only for her screentime to be compared to that of a perfume ad — she would eventually get some actual things to do in the 2024 sequel. Her other film credits amount to a spattering of voice roles (Lola Bunny in “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” Meechee in “Smallfoot”) and an honest to god first-billed lead role, her only before this year, in Sam Levinson’s Netflix drama “Malcolm and Marie” — a rather wretched misfire that didn’t quite set her or costar John David Washington up for the Oscar success they might have been hoping for.

On TV, it’s of course a different story. Levinson might have been responsible for the failure that was “Malcolm and Marie,” but he’s also responsible for her most acclaimed role, as recovering addict Rue in the discourse generator/HBO teen drama “Euphoria.” Her committed, volatile performance found acclaim, and earned her two Emmy Awards; her work as an executive producer on the project also helped establish her as a decision maker with an unusual amount of control over her projects for a young celebrity. Still, despite that, and with absolutely no insult to her acting abilities, it’s probably fair to say that Zendaya’s star image is more about her likable personality and gorgeous fashion offscreen than it is anything she’s done on film.

So that makes “Challengers,” her new film with Luca Guadagnino, feel like the movie we’ve been waiting for her to make for years now. Also starring Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, the tennis drama casts her as Tashi, a gifted tennis prodigy turned embittered coach following an injury, who navigates her desires for a former flame and her husband against the backdrop of a US Open-qualifying tournament. Not only is this an unqualified leading role, with Justin Kuritzkes’ script positioning Tashi as the fulcrum of the characters’ queasy threeway relationship, but it’s a very adult role as well , loaded with the history and maturity Zendaya struggled to embody in “Malcolm and Marie.” After spending her 20s delivering earnest, openhearted performances as young women and often literal teenagers, Zendaya is now 27, and “Challengers” feels like a deliberate turn of the page onto the next chapter of her career, an announcement and demonstration of the abilities she has thus far only hinted she’s capable of.

With “Challengers” in theaters April 27, IndieWire is looking back on Zendaya’s bright but scant career, to determine what sticks out in her short filmography. The “Spider-Man” series is lumped together as one entry, as are the “Dune” films. Voice acting roles in projects like “Smallfoot,” minor one-episode roles in sitcoms like “Blackish,” and her early work as a child star are excluded from the list. Projects are ranked based on Zendaya’s performance, rather than the overall quality of the film or TV show itself. Read on for eight of Zendaya’s performances, ranked from worst to best.

8. ‘Malcolm and Marie’ (2021)

Who Zendaya plays:  Marie, a recovering drug addict and the girlfriend of writer-director Malcolm Elliot (John David Washington). Sam Levinson’s film focuses on one tense night in their relationship, after the premiere of his new film, as Marie confronts Malcolm over his selfishness and strip-mining of her own trauma for the plot of the movie. 

Is she good? It’s clear why ‘Malcolm and Marie’ was an appealing project for Zendaya. After only portraying teenagers very far into her career, here’s a ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ riff that allows her to play a truly adult woman and explore the bruised, complicated edges of a longterm relationship. But ‘Malcolm and Marie’ is an empty disaster, and Zendaya is frankly a big part of the reason why. Whether it’s an issue with Levinson’s direction or her own limitations at that stage of her career, Zendaya feels strained and labored in the role, desperately trying to conjure a sense of lived history and simmering resentment that dissipates quickly like a mist. If she doesn’t embarrass herself as much as Washington (who gives a genuinely terrible performance), Zendaya’s work exposes many of her weak spots as an actor that she otherwise has done well to conceal. 

7. ‘The Greatest Showman’ (2017)

Who Zendaya plays:  Anne Wheeler, a trapeze artist in ‘The Greatest Showman’s’  extremely fictionalized portrayal of PT Barnum’s famed circus. Anne’s gorgeous performances attract the attention of Barnum’s business partner Phillip (Zac Efron), but their love is complicated by the racial divisions of the late 1800s.  

Is she good? Zendaya certainly  looks great in the Michael Gracey musical, bringing strong presence and great fits as the free-spirited circus performer. But the hokey musical isn’t exactly the greatest moment for any of its stars, and Zendaya in particular has the misfortune of being siloed off into an embarrassingly cliché ‘love triumphs over racism’ subplot. Even more frustrating, Anne isn’t afforded any agency in this love story, with Efron’s Phillip receiving all of the attention; she’s essentially just his prize for overcoming the prejudice of his family. Zendaya acquits herself to the role just fine, and she and Efron kill their big musical number ‘Rewrite the Stars,’ but on a whole, ‘The Greatest Showman’ barely gives her anything to do. 

6. ‘The OA’ (2019)

Who Zendaya plays:  Yes, Zendaya is in ‘The OA,’ the famously weird Netflix sci-fi series probably most known nowadays for its fans’ campaigns to bring it back over anything that actually happens in it. She’s not a big part at all, however; she appears in the second season as Fola, a supporting character in a storyline involving private detective Karim (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and his search for a missing girl named Michelle. A puzzle expert and a friend of Michelle, Fola helps Karim untangle the mystery, which involves an online game called ‘Q Symphony.’ 

Is she good?  In a career defined by careful choices for her next steps and selective acceptance of projects, Zendaya’s recurring part in ‘The OA’ Season 2 is delightfully random, casting the star in a small, not particularly showy supporting role. She’s mostly there to deliver exposition about the game Karim is cracking and keep the plot moving. As a result, it’s one of her most easy to forget performances, but she’s perfectly fine, and conveys Fola’s growing obsession with the online game well. 

5. ‘K.C. Undercover’ (2015-2018)

Who Zendaya plays:  Zendaya’s last Disney Channel project, ‘K.C. Undercover’ follows in the footsteps of other kid sitcoms about teens living double lives. Her character K.C. Cooper is a math prodigy who discovers her parents are undercover spies and gets recruited by the same agency to act as an agent against a mysterious criminal organization. 

Is she good?  Most of Zendaya’s Disney Channel output has been excluded from this list on account of how young she was at the time, but ‘K.C. Undercover’ is, technically speaking, her first real work as an adult; she was 18 when the pilot premiered in 2015, and stuck with the show for three seasons, long past her MCU debut in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming.’ Beyond its significance in helping Zendaya transition out of cutesy tween roles, ‘K.C. Undercover’ also saw her co-produce on the project, setting her up to eventually work in a producing capacity on ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Challengers.’ The role is more than just a stepping stone though; Zendaya is legitimately good in the family comedy, with a bright, spunky, sarcastic screen presence that manages to feel relaxed and effortless compared to the often strained and hyper performances of other Disney shows. It didn’t win her any (non-Kids Choice) awards, but ‘K.C. Undercover’ is a graceful transition between Zendaya’s child star past and her mainstream A-list present. 

4. ‘Spider-Man’ Film Series (2017-2021)

Who Zendaya plays: Michelle Jones-Watson, or MJ (as in, Mary Jane Watson). Initially an apathetic and blunt high schooler with few friends, MJ eventually falls in love with Peter Parker (Tom Holland), and becomes a trusted ally in his crime-fighting exploits as the superhero Spider-Man.  

Is she good?  The Spider-Man franchise hasn’t always done right by its female leads. Consider the weak writing poor Kirsten Dunst was often saddled with as Mary Jane in the original ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy, or Emma Stone’s cheap death as Gwen Stacy in the aborted ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films. Zendaya, in her first real film role (if you don’t count a voice role in ‘Super Buddies’ and an appearance in Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’), gets similarly short shrift in ‘Homecoming,’ where she’s a glorified cameo, albeit a funny one with some killer line delivery. But the sequels ‘Far From Home’ and ‘No Way Home’ fix this by integrating her into the plot more closely, allowing her to demonstrate real agency instead of being a simple damsel in distress. Zendaya’s a total charmer in the role, and the best part of either film is her lowkey but endearing chemistry with Holland. Watching the films, it’s no surprise they got together in real life; the two make MJ and Peter make sense together, resulting in one of the few superhero film romantic subplots with real spark. 

3. ‘Dune’ Series (2021-2024)

Who Zendaya plays:  Chani, a young Freman who resides on the desert planet Arrakis. First appearing in Paul Atreides’ (Timotheé Chalamet) dreams, Chani eventually encounters the young noble after he flees the destruction of his house and offers him a place in her wandering clan, becoming his lover. Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ adaptation makes some major changes to Chani’s character; in the books, she’s unfailingly loyal to the young noble in his brutal quest to claim revenge on the warring House Harkonnen and his ultimate ascension as the Lisan Al Gaib that rules the Fremen. In the films, she’s his strongest critic, and her belief that the Fremen must liberate themselves creates a constant friction in the lovebirds’ relationship.   

Is she good?  After notoriously playing more of a fleeting presence than an actual character in the first ‘Dune,’ ‘Part Two’ allows Zendaya to step up to the plate as the film’s moral compass and female lead. And while her performance sometimes errs a bit too casual and calm to feel in step with the space operatics around her, she otherwise delivers some passion that’s sorely needed in the clinical story, conveying Chani’s soft emotional side and her firebrand belief in the Fremen’s need to rise on their own. Plus, she just looks and acts cool in her desert gear, and in a film like ‘Dune’ where atmosphere and visuals are at the forefront of the experience, being radiantly beautiful and commandingly charismatic is 90 percent of the job. 

2. ‘Euphoria’ (2019-2022)

Who Zendaya plays:  Rue Bennett, a teenager whose mental health struggles and grief over her father’s death push her into drug addiction. Sam Levinson’s loose remake of an Israeli teen show picks up with Rue back home from an extensive stint in rehab and soon sprawls to encompass a large ensemble of teens navigating sex and relationships. Through it all, Rue’s struggles to remain sober and her burgeoning romance with new girl Jules (Hunter Schafer) form the often exhausting series’ emotional core. 

Is she good?  Before ‘Euphoria,’ Zendaya hadn’t had the opportunity to prove herself as an actor outside of Disney shows and Marvel movies. ‘Euphoria’ changed that, earning her two Emmys and making her the youngest winner of the Best Drama Actress trophy. And although ‘Euphoria’ is a show that people will never stop arguing online about, virtually everyone can agree how great Zendaya is as the mercurial Rue. She shifts between sweetness, selfishness, and mania on a dime, and papers over the show’s writing cracks ably with her likability and earnest work. She goes wild with Rue’s many freak-out scenes, but her best moments are quieter scenes with Schafer’s Jules, where she demonstrates a sense of longing and bone-deep desire nostalgic to anyone who’s ever been a lovesick teen. Whether ‘Euphoria’ will return, and in what shape it will, is an open question; for all of the show’s faults, if it’s really over, Zendaya’s work is the one part that will be truly missed. 

1. ‘Challengers’ (2024)

Who Zendaya plays:  Luca Guadagnino’s sensual sports drama ‘Challengers’ follows Zendaya’s central femme fatale of sorts, Tashi, across two timelines. In the first, Tashi is a gifted teenage tennis prodigy who attracts the advances of fellow players Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) — although she deduces there’s some unexplored chemistry between the two men as well. In the second, Tashi is the coach of her now husband Art after a career-ending injury, whose loyalties to her family are tested when Art finds himself across the net of Patrick after falling out with him years earlier.  

Is she good?  Guadagnino has a lot of bright qualities as a filmmaker, but perhaps his strongest asset is that he’s a terrific director of actors, especially young actors. Consider how he guided Timothée Chalamet to the innocence-lost despair of ‘Call Me By Your Name,’ or brought a nervy, exquisite performance out of Taylor Russell in ‘Bones and All.’ So it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s under Guadagnino that Zendaya finally achieves the type of mature adult performance that has felt just beyond her grasp for so much of her career. She’s still playing a kid in part of the movie of course, but what’s great about her work is how she hints at the darkness and thirst underneath Tashi’s simple exterior both as an ingenue tennis darling and as an in-command coach. She brings a vibrant physicality to the role, her every move vibrating with lust and anger and resentment, with a flinty sensuality that recalls an old Hollywood star and proves captivatingly incongruous with her very Gen Z image. After a career that’s felt like a warmup, ‘Challengers’ sees Zendaya finally serve and deliver a performance worth cheering for. 

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Cannabis rolling papers may pose health risks from heavy metals, study finds.

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The lack of regulation on cannabis rolling papers may expose users to health risks due to the presence of unsafe quantities of heavy metals, according to a new study.

Researchers from Lake Superior State University in Michigan recently published a study in the journal ACS Omega in order to measure the heavy metal content in commercially available cannabis rolling papers.

They analyzed the elemental composition of 53 commercially available rolling papers and assessed the potential risks of exposure in comparison to established standards.

The findings showed that around one-quarter of the samples exceeded the recommended levels of copper for inhaled pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, certain cannabis rolling papers contain elevated levels of elements such as copper, chromium, and vanadium, which could pose health risks. The study also revealed that some cannabis rolling papers use copper-based coloring, potentially exposing users to unsafe levels of copper, mainly when used in large quantities.

In this context, repeated exposure to heavy metals through inhalation can accumulate in the body over time, causing health problems and increasing the risk of developing diseases.

The heavy metals in these papers originate from various sources, including residual chemicals from manufacturing, ink and dyes applied during production, and potentially contaminated plants used in papermaking if grown in polluted soil. Researchers also explained that recycled paper poses an even higher risk as extra chemicals are often added during the recycling process to enhance its appearance. These added chemicals may include lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and zinc.

By analyzing the levels of 26 different elements in cannabis rolling papers, researchers compared the level of these elements with the standards established by various states in the U.S. and Canada for inhaled cannabis products. Although there are typically no specific regulations regarding the elemental content of rolling papers, this comparison provided insights into their potential contribution to consumer exposure.

The findings revealed significant disparities in regulations across different states, particularly concerning acceptable arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead levels. Even if rolling papers were subject to regulation akin to cannabis products, the limits for these elements varied widely between jurisdictions, sometimes by 20 to 50 times.

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Researchers found that calcium was the most common element in rolling papers, probably because of additives used in making paper. They also found magnesium, sodium, potassium, aluminum, iron, manganese, barium, copper, and zinc.

The exceptionally high metal levels in some samples taken into exam pose potential risks for users, according to this study.

The authors of this study suspect that certain manufacturers used inks containing copper pigments. For instance, the blue cone showed an even distribution of copper and titanium on its surface, suggesting the use of copper-containing pigment. In contrast, they noted that the yellow and red cones lacked copper but contained other elements like titanium and strontium, commonly used in coloring.

Overall, the analysis showed that copper was present in the green, blue, and purple parts of the rainbow cone, with the highest amount in the blue part. Chromium was found in the gold-colored tip.

These results suggest health risks from copper-based pigments in some rolling papers when smoked due to the potential release of hazardous compounds during combustion.

This study highlights the concerning lack of regulations for rolling papers, raising worries about potential exposure to harmful elements like copper, particularly considering the medical use of cannabis by many users.

With varying cannabis laws across states and the federal government, there's a lack of unified guidance, and researchers suggested that states should collaborate to establish limits on toxic elements in cannabis and rolling papers based on their findings.

Researchers also suggested that manufacturing processes can exacerbate exposure risks, especially when using copper-based inks, and encouraged manufacturers to eliminate their use, which could significantly reduce copper levels in papers.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — The Greatest Showman — An Encouraging Message in the Movie ‘The Greatest Showman’

An Encouraging Message in The Movie 'The Greatest Showman'

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Published: Apr 17, 2023

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A Culture Warrior Takes a Late Swing

The editor and essayist Joseph Epstein looks back on his life and career in two new books.

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By Dwight Garner

NEVER SAY YOU’VE HAD A LUCKY LIFE: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life , by Joseph Epstein

FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTENT: New and Selected Essays , by Joseph Epstein

When Tammy Wynette was asked to write a memoir in her mid-30s, she initially declined, she said in an interview, because “I didn’t think my life was over yet.” The publisher responded: Has it occurred to you that in 15 years no one might care? She wrote the book. “Stand by Your Man: An Autobiography” (1979) was a hit.

The essayist and editor Joseph Epstein — whose memoir “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life,” is out now, alongside a greatest-hits collection titled “Familiarity Breeds Content” — has probably never heard Wynette sing except by accident. (In a 1993 essay, he wrote that he wished he didn’t know who Willie Nelson was, because it was a sign of a compromised intellect.) But his memoir illustrates another reason not to wait too long to commit your life to print.

There is no indication that Epstein, who is in his late 80s, has lost a step. His prose is as genial and bland, if comparison to his earlier work is any indication, as it ever was. But there’s a softness to his memories of people, perhaps because it was all so long ago. This is the sort of memoir that insists someone was funny, or erudite, or charismatic, while rarely providing the crucial details.

Epstein aw-shucks his way into “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” — pretending to be self-effacing while not being so in the least is one of his salient qualities as a writer — by warning readers, “I may not have had a sufficiently interesting life to merit an autobiography.” This is because he “did little, saw nothing notably historic, and endured not much out of the ordinary of anguish or trouble or exaltation.” Quickly, however, he concludes that his life is indeed worth relating, in part because “over the years I have acquired the literary skill to recount that life well.”

Here he is wrong in both directions. His story is interesting enough to warrant this memoir. His personal life has taken complicated turns. And as the longtime editor of the quarterly magazine The American Scholar, and a notably literate conservative culture warrior, he’s been in the thick of things.

He does lack the skill to tell his own story, though, if by “skill” we mean not well-scrubbed Strunk and White sentences but close and penetrating observation. Epstein favors tasseled loafers and bow ties, and most of his sentences read as if they were written by a sentient tasseled loafer and edited by a sentient bow tie.

He grew up in Chicago, where his father manufactured costume jewelry. The young Epstein was popular and, in high school, lettered in tennis. His title refers to being lucky, and a big part of that luck, in his estimation, was to grow up back when kids could be kids, before “the therapeutic culture” took over.

This complaint sets the tone of the book. His own story is set next to a rolling series of cultural grievances. He’s against casual dress, the prohibition of the word “Negro,” grade inflation, the Beat Generation, most of what occurred during the 1960s, standards slipping everywhere, de-Westernizing college curriculums, D.E.I. programs, you name it. His politics aren’t the problem. We can argue about those. American culture needs more well-read conservatives. The problem is that in his search for teachable moments, his memoir acquires the cardboard tone of a middling opinion column.

His youth was not all tennis lessons and root beer floats. He and his friends regularly visited brothels because, he writes, sex was not as easy to come by in the 1950s. He was kicked out of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for his role in the selling of a stolen accounting exam to other students.

He was lucky to find a place at the University of Chicago, a place of high seriousness. The school changed him. He began to reassess his values. He began to read writers like Irving Howe, Sidney Hook, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, and felt his politics pull to the right.

After college, he was drafted into the Army and ended up in Little Rock, Ark., where he met his first wife. At the time, she was a waitress at a bar and restaurant called the Gar Hole. Here Epstein’s memoir briefly threatens to acquire genuine weight.

She had lost custody of her two sons after a divorce. Together they got them back, and she and Epstein had two sons of their own. After their divorce, Epstein took all four of the boys. This is grist for an entire memoir, but Epstein passes over it quickly. One never gets much of a sense of what his boys were like, or what it was like to raise them. He later tells us that he has all but lost touch with his stepsons and has not seen them for decades.

He worked for the magazine The New Leader and the Encyclopaedia Britannica before becoming the editor of The American Scholar in 1975. It was a position he would hold for 22 years. He also taught at Northwestern University for nearly three decades.

At The American Scholar he began to write a long personal essay in each issue, under the pseudonym Aristides. He wrote 92 of these, on topics such as smoking and envy and reading and height. Most ran to 6,500 words, or about 4,000 words longer than they should have been.

Many magazine editors like to write every so often, to keep a hand in. But there is something unseemly about an editor chewing up acres of space in his own publication on a regular basis. Editorially, it’s a droit du seigneur imposition.

A selection of these essays, as well as some new ones, can now be found in “Familiarity Breeds Content.” In his introduction to this book, Christopher Buckley overpraises Epstein, leaving the reader no choice but to start mentally pushing back.

Buckley calls Epstein “the most entertaining living essayist in the English language.” (Not while Michael Kinsley, Lorrie Moore, Calvin Trillin, Sloane Crosley and Geoff Dyer, among many others, walk the earth.) He repurposes Martin Amis’s comment about Saul Bellow: “One doesn’t read Saul Bellow. One can only reread him.” To this he adds, “Ditto Epstein.” (Epstein is no Saul Bellow.) Buckley says, “Joe Epstein is incapable of writing a boring sentence.”

Well. How about this one, from an essay about cats?

A cat, I realize, cannot be everyone’s cup of fur.

Or this one, from an essay about sports and other obsessions:

I have been told there are people who wig out on pasta.

Or this one, about … guess:

When I was a boy, it occurs to me now, I always had one or another kind of hat.

Juggling today appears to be undergoing a small renaissance.

If one is looking to save on fuel bills, politics is likely to heat up a room quicker than just about anything else.

In tennis I was most notable for flipping and catching my racket in various snappy routines.

The essays are, by and large, as tweedy and self-satisfied as these lines make them sound. There are no wild hairs in them, no sudden deepenings of tone. Nothing is at stake. We are stranded with him on the putt-putt course.

Epstein fills his essays with quotation after quotation, as ballast. I am a fan of well-deployed, free-range quotations. So many of Epstein’s are musty and reek of Bartlett’s. They are from figures like Lord Chesterfield and Lady Mary Montagu and Sir Herbert Grierson and Tocqueville and Walpole and Carlyle. You can feel the moths escaping from the display case in real time.

To be fair, I circled a few sentences in “Familiarity Breeds Content” happily. I’m with him on his distrust of “fun couples.” He writes, “A cowboy without a hat is suitable only for bartending.” I liked his observation, which he borrowed from someone else, that a career has five stages:

(1) Who is Joseph Epstein? (2) Get me Joseph Epstein. (3) We need someone like Joseph Epstein. (4) What we need is a young Joseph Epstein. (5) Who is Joseph Epstein?

It’s no fun to trip up a writer on what might have been a late-career victory lap. Epstein doesn’t need me to like his work. He’s published more than 30 books, and you can’t do that unless you’ve made a lot of readers happy.

NEVER SAY YOU’VE HAD A LUCKY LIFE : Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life | By Joseph Epstein | Free Press | 287 pp. | $29.99

FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTENT : New and Selected Essays | By Joseph Epstein | Simon & Schuster | 441 pp. | Paperback, $20.99

Dwight Garner has been a book critic for The Times since 2008, and before that was an editor at the Book Review for a decade. More about Dwight Garner

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