Fosse's art came from his combined celebration/obsession with Broadway showbiz pizazz,,,,,,,and wisely, with sardonic wit, he saw both himself and all of us as lifelong tapdancers, trying to soft-shoe our way through life, playing whatever role might get us the most applause......
Didn't matter what you did or what you said.......as long as you could "give 'em the old razzle dazzle" to quote one of the most telling songs from Fosse's "Chicago", his penultimate worldview of a surface life lived both on stage and off......
And if you have trouble believing life is show-biz......turn on the national news, if you can stomach it....
"The Greatest Showman" instantly erupts like a film version of some imaginary Bob Fosse show that ran for 10 years on Broadway at $900 a seat. Hugh Jackman, maybe the only movie star with honest-to-God Musical song 'n dance chops, commands center stage like he's already waiting for a well earned standing ovation..........and the movie's barely gotten started.
Jackman and the cast arrive fully armed with an incredibly catchy, thumping, pounding show stopping score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul ("La La Land" and Broadway's 'Dear Evan Handler'). Unlike the lilting, lighter-than-air modern jazz tunes of 'La La Land', Pasek and Paul's music here pumps out a percussion-heavy, take-no-prisoners series of eye-and-ear-popping numbers, put across by Jackman, Zac Efron and Zenaya at the top of their lungs.
This movie doesn't just want entertain people in the upper rows of the theater, it practically reaches out into the lobby and street outside the theater.....
Does it have anything to do with P.T.Barnum's real life? Are you kidding? We're talkin' Fosse-land showbiz razz-ma-tazz here. It's more like a glossy music-video dreamscape tour of what we'd all like to believe a mythical life for Barnum would look like. And we fell in love with every calculated, deliberately overblown minute of it.......
It may be no heavier than a soap bubble, but for pure entertainment value, the BQ nominates "The Greatest Showman" as one of the best films we've enjoyed in 2017.....
When Hugh Jackman and company burst out into one of those Pasek/Paul roof-raising anthems, he's a far bigger superhero to us than when he's Wolverine-ing people with steel claws. An easy call, this one......5 stars (*****),a FIND OF FINDS......maybe more superheroes should learn to sing and dance......
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