Nathan was utterly appalled having seen The Greatest Showman, and his shock and awe inspired me, as did this mildly tragic advertisement in the Montblanc storefront

On one hand, I’m sorry Nathan that I didn’t hate it more. On the other, you get this picture. So shut up.

Not totally sure who this is for, and who paid whom for what. People who go to the Montblanc store don’t go to the cinema, and people who go to the cinema don’t see The Greatest Showman.

Nevertheless, there I was, inexplicably at Salle 1, the biggest at Gaumont Opéra, watching an ad for Club Med, which apparently is for couples who want to hook up and for families with kids. I’m not sure who watches whom in that scenario.

So I was prepared to hatelove The Greatest Showman but musicals are a friend of mine, etc., and The Greatest Showman, for all its faults, which are non-existent, is an actual musical. It’s the cheap reinvention of a moderately reprehensible character, transformed into a pleasant stock character, with a lesson to learn about family, surrounded by the up up with people cast. It’s the same kind of film Night and Day was, but unlike Night and Day, Mr. Hugh Jackman is not magically straight, he’s just someone that totally didn’t exploit people and own slaves.

The lyric ‘You dream with your eyes wide open’ may not be the even Jerome Kern. But you will dream with your mouth wide open.

I don’t mind that, not owning slaves certainly, but turning the story into something edible for kids or couples who watch them for some weird sex thing. I don’t get ClubMed at all, but that won’t stop them from suing me.

Glitter-fy is what musicals do, what they should do, absolutely ignore history in every way possible and turn real life into the part where you say ‘I don’t know what my future will be…’ and start singing.

Now the songs are…well, I knew Cole Porter, Cole Porter was a friend of mine… Okay, I knew him from Night and Day. What? He was gay? Okay, smart guy. Then why was he played by Cary Grant?

So part 00s American Idol and part 10s The Voice, the music was loud and buoyant and overproduced, which I normally love; I listen to the massively underrated Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack to this day. When Ms. Rebecca Ferguson appeared on stage of a 1880 Carnegie Hall, the notes read ‘Please be an opera/hip-hop mashup. Please be an opera/hip-hop mashup’. I was a little disappointed when it turned out to be the ballad that you sing in the quarter finals.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I was not hoping for Hamilton. I don’t want to die.

The music not being actively terrible, I found myself tearing up a few times. It’s a film that is 100% itself, without a cynical bone in its earnest body. It made me imagine Mr. Hugh Jackman running around Hollywood trying to get it made, and how much I’d like to see that musical.

Not great, but you don’t hate it, any more than you would hate a prairie dog for not knowing how to pour concrete. It didn’t know how to be good, but it knew how to be sweet.