I went to the new musical movie The Greatest Showman, which is directed by Michael Gracey. He is pretty new to directing, and currently working on a Naruto movie, so that is definitely interesting. I think he did a good job for a first huge flick, though I did not like the movie at all. The best thing was when my bro’s wife’s mom said: “Who knew Hugh Jackman could sing?!” and my bro’s wife just said: “Well, everyone, mom.”

Well I indeed already knew he could sing, thanks to Les Miserables, so I never expected The Greatest Showman to be such a let-down. This is why:

1. The man himself

The guy, P.T. Barnum, was a lousy guy. I did not like the way he treated people. I still do not understand why the people from his circus suddenly came singing to him when he was down in the pub. Why were they so cool with him all of a sudden? He treated them like shit, he treated his family like shit and at the end he even left everybody to be the father he never was all of a sudden. What the?

2. The daughters ballet crew

So what was up with that? His little girl had trouble with other girls in the group, and she was all sad about it, but we never heard about it ever again. All of a sudden she was still doing ballet, and still leading the group, whilst we never got to hear how the group was behaving towards her now.

3. The CGI animals

Let me be very clear on this one: I love CGI animals, cause it means no real animals were harmed or uncomfy. However, we have all seen Jungle Book and Life of Pi: we know what a good CGI animal looks like, and especially that horse running away from the fire was crazy ugly. Come on people, let’s use that computer power.

4. The fake singing of Rebecca Ferguson

Rebecca Ferguson is a gorgeous woman, a cool actress and she has done some awesome movies till thus far. And of course I understand that the people are not singing live, it has to be lip synced, it might not even be sang by the artist on screen. I do not care about it, but I found her first performance very difficult to look at. The way she moved her lips, it was very sexy but it was simply not like she was singing at all. And it took forever!

5. The songs

This is a tricky subject, but I am going for it anyway. The songs were not strong enough. They were all these kind of happy tunes, they came back way too often and I just did not like them, I did not really learn from them, they were just a bit boring.

6. The relationship between Zac and Zendaya

Remember how Zac Efrons characters parents were not okay about the love thing he had going on with his chick Zendaya, based on the color of her skin? Well, at the same time her brother was not too happy about his lil sis dating the boss either, but for some reason that trouble does not get any attention after one evil look from her brother towards Zac. Does it only matter how white people feel?

7. The lack of real drama

I though Les Mis was a bit too long, but it was a good movie. There were moments where people around me were crying. This movie did not have it. Every bad thing that happened was replaced by something happy pretty swiftly, and there was just not a feeling of drama and depression, even though there were many deep and dark subjects to explore.

8. The fighting with the protesters

What I hated most about the movie was how violence was the solution for the issues with the protesters. I mean, the protesters did not harm anyone with their signs and things, and yet they were physically attacked by our odd friends at least twice. I though it was not necessary to end things like that, as nothing was resolved with words, even afterwards we just simply did not hear from them again, but no specifics were given.

 

So, as you can see there was lots to hate. Not everything was bad, but there were many loose ends, too many. Let’s hope our director does a better job at Naruto!