The Greatest Showman

Seen at the Waterfront Cinema in Greenock, Scotland

Bea says:  Cecil and I try not to be film snobs, but I was wary that this film might be a tad too commercial for us.  However – we were attempting to keep awake (jet-lagged), it was on at a good time (6 pm Saturday night) and location (The Waterfront, Greenock) for us, and it has a pretty good cast – Hugh Jackman and the always wonderful Michelle Williams – who I have been following since her Dawson’s Creek days.  We’d seen a few previews of it and it looked interesting, colourful and perhaps a bit dark too, so I anticipated a bit of depth.

What the previews didn’t really show was that it is actually a musical (not Cecil’s favourite genre), but apart from a few isolated incidents there wasn’t too much random bursting into song and the song and dance pieces generally were well woven into the story, and fitted with the circus/carnival/concert action anyway.  In fact, the music was great and the choreography spectacular; so much so that Cecil and I both turned to each other at the end and suggested buying the CD (yes, we are that old fashioned…I do use digital music options at times but Cecil doesn’t at all).

The film is purportedly the story of PT Barnum (Jackman), the circus magnate, as he establishes the first circus in New York City; going from rags to riches to the threat of rags again.  He marries his childhood sweetheart (Williams), has a little family and after being made redundant in his post as a shipping clerk, borrows enough money to get the circus – aka museum of curiosities - up and running.  It gets off to a slow start, but after Barnum’s children suggest more live acts he seeks out a range of people to provide them.  The film advertises itself as being about acceptance, and bringing people who were hidden into the light and placing them centre stage; this theme is oft spoken of in the film and some of the songs are about it.  It is a very interesting theme to explore when looking at the history of circus, and it would be interesting to see a heavier, more in-depth film about the same topic actually. 

But to be honest, it was the days between Christmas and New Year, it was fun, it was beautiful to watch, it had comedy and tragedy, and it enough subplots (Zac Efron’s assistant ringmaster role and forbidden love interest; and the character Jenny Lind’s concert tour) to maintain interest.  

The music and dancing were feelgood, and we left feeling happy – what more can you ask for?

Efron is probably responsible for the large (and largely female) youth audience; but I did notice again that the film seemed designed to attract a young audience; it was rather like watching a combination of Harry Potter and the Voice!  But I like both of those, so it was not in a bad way at all.  

***.5

Cecil says: When Hugh Jackman begins to sing within ten seconds of the start of The Greatest Showman, I had to chuckle as I had been caught out just as I was in Sunshine on Leith, when the soldiers in the opening scene burst into song. I had no idea this was a musical but I quickly realised it was.

Funnily enough earlier in the day I had read a Tweet by someone who loved the soundtrack so much that she was planning on going straight out and buying the CD. Actually, by the end of the film, we were both thinking the same. The music was a central part of this film, and the voices were remarkably strong: who knew Jackman could sing that well?

The dancing is also fantastic. I guess to audition for a role in a film like this, you need to have all those skills that go along with voice projection and being able to get inside the role you are playing.

In the case of Zac Efron, I think his dancing skills outdo his ability to act, but boy can he move. I loved the scene towards the end where he swivels on his knees as he spins in to take centre stage. But the best scene of all for movement and choreography has to be on the ropes when Efron and Zendaya flirt with each other and move towards accepting their mutual attraction.

For me, the overall feel was as much a production that will go on to Broadway or the West End as it was The Voice (as Bea says). It is interesting how this style of film-making is taking hold at the moment. This one worked, though. It kept us awake and left us feeling good.

***

Sunshine on Leith

Seen at the wonderful Palace Cinema in Malton, North Yorkshire

Cecil says: The film opens with a bunch of soldiers in an armoured vehicle somewhere in the Middle East. One of them begins to sing and is joined by the rest of them before you know it. Same things troops have done, and sailors before them, for centuries...

It was only when the two main characters are back home in Edinburgh, and begin singing again – this time with rather well-choreographed steps down the Leith streets – that it dawned on me: Sunshine on Leith is a musical.

Now, this is the second musical I’ve seen recently without knowing it in advance (Rock of Ages caught me out too), and I’m not a big fan of the genre. But Sunshine on Leith was a lot of fun, the singing was really rather good (well, it is all based on The Proclaimers’ music, so what do you expect?), and by the final scene, with the mass flash-mob in central Edinburgh, I felt like getting up and shaking my stuff with the rest of them.

I don’t know anything about film-making, so I’ve no idea how you go about transposing a stage play to the big screen, but it didn’t feel as if the producers of this movie did much transposing. Apart from the (very frequent) camera panning over Edinburgh skylines (so frequent in fact that you feel as if the Edinburgh Tourist Board had a hand in the final cut), virtually every scene felt as if it had been taken straight from the stage.

By half way through, I was whispering to Bea every few minutes, ‘I can feel a song coming up’, and sure enough one of the main characters would burst into song, usually backed by the amassed crowd of onlookers in the pub, on the steps, in the museum, wherever you liked, basically.

Plot-wise, this was a nice story about two young soldiers getting out of the army after a touch tour of duty in Afghanistan (I think), and readapting to home life; it’s about their relationships, their parents, about dreams and wavering views of where life is taking us.

If that sounds a bit deep, I’ve pitched it wrong. This is a fun film, which I’m sure most of us can relate to on one level or other. There were a few weak moments in the dialogue and the storyline, but the overall feel was positive, so who cares?

I don’t suppose you’ll see such glowing reviews from the Glasgow side of Scotland. But I’ll let Bea elaborate on that...

***.5

Bea says: 

The musical aspect of Sunshine on Leith caught me by surprise too - although I was familiar with The Proclaimer's album of the same name, and had read some blurb on the film, so knew it was about two soldiers returning from Afghanistan, and that it was set to The Proclaimers music.  "Set to" made me think that The Proclaimers would be somewhere in the background, so I wasn't expecting people to sing them, but did enjoy it.

There were some really good performers and performances here - Jane Horrocks as Jean and Peter Mullen as Rab particularly, and the stage play feel means the dialogue feels stronger than it otherwise might.  There are some slight plot lapses in my view - Rab's infidelity is rather quickly got over by Jean, considering how badly she initially reacted, at a point in the film where suddenly all the difficulties experienced by everyone were being rather quickly got over - true 1950s musical style I guess!  The Proclaimers music and lyrics is well used to hang the story together - I've seen a few of these kinds of musicals and often this is not the case!

Edinburgh stars as itself and very nearly steals the show; the rather dismissive references to Glasgow are notable by those (like me) who have a soft spot for Scotland's other big city.. 

Most touching moment?  The lyrics of Letter from America demonstrating how similar life is in some ways to a hundred or more years ago when people left Scotland for work, and for a new and hopefully better life.

A lovely feel-good film for a dull afternoon; a bit twee in its wrapping up of all the plotlines but with a little bit of poignancy to ensure it isn't forgettable.

***.5

Rock of Ages

Cecil says:  I kind of knew this was going to be about the music industry before I sat down to watch it, and the opening scene looked fairly normal at first: young teenage girl gets onto Greyhound bus in small town America.

Then she begins singing. And my first thought was: well, that's not very realistic, is it. But then the whole bus full of passengers takes up the chorus, and we're off...And it dawns on me: we've come to a musical. OH MY GOD. I wasn't ready for THAT!!

It's probably the first time I've been to a musical since Stayin' Alive in the 1970s. But you know what, this film grew on me as it found its way through the ups and downs of kids trying to make it on the music scene in LA.

Alec Baldwin was brilliant as the ageing night club owner; Russell Brand almost as good as his side-kick and partner (and I'm no fan of Russell Brand in real life, so that's quite something coming from me); and Catherine Zeta-Jones adding a bit of evil to the storyline, kind of like one of the villains in a Batman film ("we're gonna clean up this city", but in fact they're the evil ones).

And Tom Cruise does a pretty good job as the idiosyncratic mega-star, but I'm sure others will rave about him, so I'll leave it at that. My one question is: did he do his own singing or was it dubbed??

A feel-good film, but not the slightest bit thought-provoking. But, hey, for a bit of innocent fun, worth seeing.

***

Bea says: Working too hard? Endless UK rain getting you down? Worries? Troubles? Go and see this film, it's the perfect antidote. You can disengage your brain and forget all about real life completely for a couple of hours, and you'll leave with a smile on your face.

I had read a review of Rock of Ages the week before we went to see it, and it was on the strength of that  review that I suggested it to musical-hating Cecil - I had been under the impression that it was the story of a struggling nightclub which was about to go bust and whose entire future hung on legendary ageing rocker Stacee Jaxx (played by an apparently 29 year old looking Tom Cruise), and featuring music from the 1970s. After the film, I told Cecil this and we both fell about laughing - had the reviewer actually seen the the film at all?

Rock of Ages is kind of about a struggling nightclub, and a gig by Stacee Jaxx (played by the very under-rated, and very funny Tom Cruise, who looks awesome, although not 29!), but it mostly about two young people trying to make it in Hollywood, like so many before them, and features a quite hard (although not heavy) rock soundtrack from the late 1980s - think Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, whose frontmen I gather Stacee Jaxx is based on. I was young in the late 1980s and I wasn't into this kind of music, or those kinds of men, at that time, but these were big hits and I remembered all but one, and Cruise was fantastic. Great fun.

***