(Michael Gracey 2017)
PG the most riskè thing to happen was the glimmer of an affair and a *gasp* interracial relationship First Impression: Hugh Jackman is a much better singer than I expected him to be, but more on that later. I don't really like feel good movies. You know, the kind that focuses on someone who's "different" than everybody else, but really they're just special. I hate these movies. That makes me sound like such a scrooge but I've known so many people who are just so annoying and everything they do is based around "oh I'm not weird I'm special". You're not special, take a shower and stop screaming every three seconds. Ugh. I'm sorry to dump all this on you but I think you need to understand my bias. That being said I found this movie bearable. I wasn't perpetually cringing in my seat and the songs were pretty good. I think part of that was that the story was fairly shallow. Usually when they get into emotions and stuff is when I want to run out of the theater, but this actually avoided a lot of that. Which is good for me, but honestly the film probably needed some more depth. Every conflict was introduced and solved within one musical sequence basically. And it's actually kind of sad that in a movie focused on empowerment and diversity the only character development occurred in the two privileged white guys. So don't go into this movie expecting anything earth shattering, the songs are catchy and the cinematography is pretty, but it has got nothing going for it in the plot department. Similar to Guardians of the Galaxy, this movie is purely spectacle. The plot is shallow and so are the characters, but the music and choreography is very entertaining. Unlike most movie musicals, the songs are very pop oriented instead of classical musical theater like songs. Which kind of surprised me because the two main songwriters were also heavily involved in La La Land, which is kind of pop but doesn't fully venture into sounding like radio pop songs. The songs in this movie were good. That doesn't sound very enthusiastic I know, but it really is. You honestly don't even need to see the movie, you can get just as much from listening to the soundtrack. I expected another Ryan Gosling debacle but Hugh Jackman was a really good singer. A real Disney princess. I'm sure there are plenty of critics ripping this movie to shreds over the plot so I'm just going to leave it at that. It was entertaining, but nothing special. But I honestly don't think it was trying to be. Sure they could've gone into the moral complexities of running a freak show and whether it's really empowering or degrading, but that wouldn't align with the positive pop vibe they created with the songs. They had to choose one or the other, and they chose the music.
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Aubrey KirchhoffI'm just screaming into the void and somehow getting graded on it. Archives
April 2018
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