The Greatest Showman (2017)

The director, Michael Gracey, is an Australian maker of commercials who has never directed a feature before, and he works with an exuberant sincerity that can’t be faked. The Greatest Showman is a concoction, the kind of film where the pieces all click into place, yet at an hour and 45 minutes it flies by, and the link it draws between P.T. Barnum and the spirit of today is more than hype.

The movie never quite stops feeling like Moulin Rouge! written in extra-large block font, or Broadway projected straight onto a big screen, which certainly isn’t bad news if that’s exactly what you love.

Shamelessly familiar and profoundly alien in equal measure, The Greatest Showman takes a billion of the world’s oldest story beats and refashions their prefab emotions into something that feels like it’s being projected from another planet.

The Greatest Showman is, like the singing, dancing, versatile actor who stars in it, larger than life. And if this is the only screen musical we can get out of the last of his peak performing years, it’ll do.

It’s not a film to break moulds or test boundaries. Yet Jackman’s real charm will carry you along.