Weekly Film- The Greatest Showman

This is a 2017 musical biopic following the life of P T Barnum. It is the first feature film from director Michael Gracey and has an original soundtrack from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who also did lyrics for La La Land as well as other Broadway musicals. It stars Hugh Jackman as Barnum, Michelle Williams as his wife Charity, Zac Efron as his business partner and Zendaya as a trapeze artist.

The films has a very conventional plot  about a man who has a dream to make a circus and decides to put people who have been pushed out of society to be the stars of it and the controversy that was around with it all. Other than a few flash backs the way it is told is very traditional and follows chronologically.They way it could seem a bit different to other films in main stream cinema are the musical numbers. These act as the life of the film and are all filled with colour and lots of movement to make the audience really wowed and to make them feel how the audience in the 19th century would feel watching Barnum circus. 

The way it is shot is also very effective it captures all of the life in the musical numbers and lots of wide shots are used to show us the big spectacle  of it all.Sometimes in a song there will be some close ups and this helps that audience to see the emotion in the character and believe what they are saying. The use of bright colours in the cinematography also effectively is shown as the outer world and streets and places people generally go are all very grey and bleak looking but when we go into Barnum circus everything is all in bright and mainly primary and secondary colours which shows the excitement in it all and how his show was a place that was magical.

The soundtrack is also very interesting as instead of music hall style songs that would have been sung, they choose to make it current and appealing to today's audience by using lots of pop music. 

The reviews for it were mixed. Looking on rotten tomatoes the critics only gave it 55% however the audience gave it 90%. This film has become quite an audience hit possibly because the times we live in now the news is often quite bleak but this film is a piece of escapism and shows holds a mirror up to the audience from a time where people just went out to be entertained. 
It may also be successful as recently there has been a resurgent in musical movies in cinema with La La Land, Les Miserable, Beauty and the Beast so perhaps people are seeing these and want to see more and Hollywood can see that they are doing well so make more.
This film grossed $198,915,383 worldwide on a budget of $84,000,000 so has been very successful and you can see why this means Hollywood would want to make more. 

This film has already done quite well at the award ceremonies as well. At the Golden globes it was nominated for Best musical or comedy as well as Jackman getting a nomination for actor and it won for best original song 'This is me'. This has created some Oscar buzz and it will definatatley get some nominations for soundtrack and song.