This previous bank holiday weekend, my wife forced me to watch The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron, I leaned into giving it a go because in recent years I have become a big fan of Efron’s and I have always liked most of what Hugh Jackman does – Even the Wolverine films nobody else likes.
So I sat there on Sunday – Feeling a bit sorry for myself due to the results from a classic bank holiday Saturday, not wanting to watch a musical at all, in fact I could think of nothing worse… It didn’t take long for the film to change my mind at all, in fact I think my mind was changed the second Jackman started singing in his rendition of the film’s opening song “The Greatest Show”. The song begins with a loud crowd chanting to create epic feeling of the film followed by Jackman’s contrasting softly spoken lyrics introducing us to the film before he proceeds with the absolute BELTER of a song.
Following on from this is the real beginning of the film where you are introduced to Jackman’s PT Barnum, a poor tailors son who is falling in love with a rich man’s daughter. This leads into one of the film’s most heartfelt songs: “A million dreams” the heart of this song showing the pure love between these children as they grow up. There’s just something incredibly lovely about this song that has had me coming back to it on Spotify quite regularly – Something that just makes me feel a bit warm inside, the contrast of the child’s voice leading into the booming vocals of Hugh Jackman makes it pure enjoyment for me.
Following on from this you have “Come Alive” which all I can say about is an absolute belter once again, the song is just so upbeat it makes me so happy! From here it leads into Efron’s debut song with Jackman “The Other Side” which I will admit is my favourite song in the whole film – In fact I am listening to it as I write this and it’s taking everything I have in me to not start belting out the lyrics – I have been writing them back and forth with Josef all morning though, that and “A million dreams”. There are so many incredible moments and songs in this film that I simply cannot do it justice in the written word – All I can say is go and watch the film.
Among this film, I also was “forced” to watch Moana and Frozen this weekend of which I enjoyed both.
This brought me to my final question – When the hell did I, someone who has always HATED musicals, suddenly get really into them. What has happened in the past few years that has completely flipped my opinion of the genre? I keep telling myself that the music is simply better and more well written these days but I have ventured into some of the older ones over the past few days to test this theory and even the older ones had some absolute bangers.
I think it must be something in my adult life has simply changed my appreciation of the genre and resulted in my new found love for it.
What do you think about musicals? Let us know in the comments section below.
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