The Greatest Showman

Give in. Roll up. Sing along.

Like Barnum himself, it's an elegant fraud, nice enough to look at as long as you don't look too close.

[This] kind of insanity is really fun to watch. The Greatest Showman is a lot of things, but it's not boring.

As I've noted, a lot of capital-N names helped make this film. But the director, the bloke who wore a beanie to the red carpet premiere in Sydney, deserves our admiration. He is the showman who, like Barnum, has his name above the door.

... [Hugh Jackman's] feel-good new film, The Greatest Showman, is where he truly gets to unleash his inner trouper, and he barely stops singing, dancing and flicking around a top hat from beginning to end.

The film's insistence that Barnum's freakshow is born from warm, fuzzy humanity and very contemporary notions of inclusivity is not just historically inaccurate, it's at odds with The Greatest Showman's extremely pretty idea of freakery. Pink hair?

The vivid cinematography by Seamus McGarvey and the exquisite costumes by Ellen Mirojnick capture the magic of Barnum’s circus and give the picture an attractive period feel.

Quite incongruously, The Greatest Showman suggests that Barnum is a heroic figure, a woke entertainer and family man, who also capitalized on animal suffering and the veritable prostitution of human oddity.

The movie is a big, loud explosion of color and excitement but one the party's over, somebody's got to clean it all up.

So nice, so cheerful, its characters so indefatigable that it's impossible to hate.