"The Greatest Showman" Coco review

The Greatest Showman.

Whats better than seeing your aunty, I mean a bearded lady at your family xmas party?

Seeing a bearded lady at the movies!  In this case in "The Greatest Showman", The PT Barnham tale of how the modern day circus came to be.

Hugh Jackman returns to his musical roots with a performance worthy of White Sunday praise. Not only does he play the lead in this sometimes funny and sometimes exciting musical, but he also reminds you of just how white teeth can be. It makes you close your lips for the whole movie.

Dental whites aside, Hugh "Whiteteeth" Jackman and cast do a wonderful job of stitching together 90 mins of song and dance.  

Ironically it does feel like one of Jackman’s earlier movies, the X men - A group of misfits come together to find a place where they can belong and call home, a bald man in a wheel chair houses them all and calls them the Xmen - Which is exactly what PT Barnham did to create the first ever circus.

So in a way, PT Barnham had the X-Men before Charles Xavier.  If the tale is true he had found small people, tall people, bearded ladies, siamese twins, people of curious origin and character.  It may have been somewhat strange in the early 1900’s but in 2017 most of these people you can find on K Rd any night of the week.

There are a few gems in this movie that stand out, one of them is the half Maori diva Keala Settle.

I didn't know who she was either, but was told to look for the bearded lady. And it’s true, the girl can sing, but I had to check on youtube to see if the beard belonged to her or not.

Settle grew up in the States and works on Broadway, which means “the girls got chops” and what chops they are.

She was tasked with singing the anthem song of this movie “This is me” a song that will reach out to the dispossessed and anyone who has felt out of step with the normal world.

Your drunk uncle doesn't fit into this catogory but he will like the song.  Settle scores a home run on this song because, besides the fake beard, her voice is big and awesome.  Some behind the scenes footage of her singing this is spine tingling.

Looking back at this movie, it’s hard not to think about an island version of this feature.  Instead of Hugh Jackman we could have Robbie Magasiva or The Rock, their smiles are almost as white as Hugh Jackmans.

We could make up the core of the cast from actors and singers from around the Pacific, and we could call it "The Greatest Wise Cousins of Shortland St"

The script itself needs a little work, but there is more than enough in the body of this movie to keep your feet tapping and your face smiling, that is of course until Hugh Jackman comes on with his colgate smile, to end all smiles.

Like the purple socks your mother in law gave you for xmas, you will hate her or love her.

6.5 Taros from me.

Enjoy!