By Naomi Anderson, Entertainment Editor
Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for! 20th Century Fox brought The Greatest Showman to theaters everywhere on Dec. 8, 2017, although production for this movie was first announced in 2009, when Hugh Jackman found a studio that would take a chance on the musical.
The box office take for the movie as of Feb. 1 was $263 million worldwide. The film is a historical period piece about P.T Barnum (Jackman) and his journey bringing “the greatest show” to be known worldwide.
The film starts with young Barnum (Ellis Rubin) falling for Charity Hallett (Skylar Dunn) and follows how the two stay in touch through letters after she’s sent to finishing school. They grow up and eventually marry, having two daughters, Caroline (Austyn Johnson) and Helen (Cameron Seely). Even though the family is happy, Barnum wants something more. After taking a large amount of money out of the bank, he opens up Barnum’s American Museum, which has wax figures of famous things. After selling few tickets, his daughters suggest something more “alive,” sparking his search to find “freaks” for his museum. This draws a large crowd and protesters, and Barnum changes the name of his museum to Barnum’s Circus.
Filled with beautiful songs such as “Never Enough,” “Tightrope,” and “Rewrite The Stars” to uplifting dance tunes like “This Is Me” and “From Now On,” this movie is absolutely mesmerizing and powerful, giving me goosebumps in the first five minutes!
I saw hype for this movie when it first came out and now I see why! The dances were choreographed very nicely, the acting was amazing, and the songs were the best part! The characters were easy to fall in love with, especially Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). Other characters included Anne Wheeler (Zendaya), a trapeze artist, Lettie Lutz (Keala Settle), a bearded woman, and Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey), a dwarf who dreams of being a soldier.
The film won a Golden Globe award last month for Best Original Song with “This Is Me” and the Truly Moving Picture Award from the Heartland Film Festival.
In January, the film’s soundtrack was No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for a second week. More than 106,000 copies were sold in the United States and 78,000 of them were sales of the complete album. In select theatres, a sing-a-long was played so families could sing with the catchy songs.
This movie was an easy 4.5 out of 5 stars! The DVD and Blu-Ray release date is set for March 6 and you bet I’ll be the first in line to bring home this magical movie.