YMMV / The Greatest Showman

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How did Barnum feel about Lind? Was it all business to him, were his bright smiles on the side of the stage just him marveling at her singing? Or was he really falling for her, despite being married and with children? Lind certainly assumed it to be the latter, but during her first overt overture to him, he is clearly uncomfortable and says he should go, which she takes badly, though this comes after Barnum and Jenny lean in for a Near Kiss. Barnum's wife on the other hand believes him when he said he was never having an affair with Lind, she was angry at him for getting too caught up in trying to be famous.
  • Was Barnum saving Carlyle representative of his devotion to the circus over his family or was it just a good deed that he did for his friend?
• Award Snub: Many people felt that "This is Me" should have won for Best Original Song at the 90th Oscars after it lost to "Remember Me" from Coco.
• Awesome Music: The songs were written by the guys who did La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen, with "This Is Me" winning Best Song at the Golden Globes. Other standouts from the soundtrack include "Never Enough", "A Million Dreams", "The Greatest Show", "Rewrite the Stars", and "From Now On".
• Broken Aesop: The film tries to have the moral of don't judge people who are different that's basically made moot when you realize the circus troupe basically work in a job that relies on them being exploited and mocked for their deformities and, in real life, WAS a job where they were exploited for their looks.
  • There is an entire scene where Tom Thumb mopes about people laughing about him for his height and it's clear the audience is supposed to sympathize with him. Later on, when The Queen and the rest of the court laugh at him, it's clear we're supposed to feel sorry for him there too but the movie itself makes him the butt of short jokes a few times during the movie (e.g. when Barnum picks him up and puts him on the horse, when he walks on the bar and sits on Barnum's hat, and when he rides the baby elephant at the end, all of which are played for laughs).
  • Speaking of Tom, in Real Life, he was the one to give Barnum the money to re-build the circus as opposed to Carlyle. Considering this movie is supposed to have a self-acceptance message about accepting people, even those who look different, it's weird that the movie gave something a physically disabled man did and give his part to someone who is definitely not physically disabled, therefore taking their story away from them. In other words, for a movie about how people who look different should be accepted, it literally wouldn't accept that a physically disabled man was able to save the day and gave something he did to help the main character to an able bodied man who never even existed.
• Cliché Storm:
  • The lyrics are mostly generic uplifting/motivational homilies strung together and set to music. On one hand, the songs are thus very radio-friendly, especially "This Is Me" and "Never Enough". But the sense of immersiveness in the setting and story doesn't come off as strongly as in many other musicals.
  • The plot in general has a check list of clichés. Poor boy that grows up befriending and falling in love with a rich girl? Check. Rich girl's parents don't like them being together? Check. They eventually end up together against the parents' wishes? Check. Man tries to impress high society and, in the process, leaves his family and friends behind? Check. Social outcasts form a family together, bonding over their the fact that they've never been accepted by anyone before? Check. And the list goes on and on.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics have overall been very mixed about the film, with a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 48 Metacritic score, mostly for straying really far from the actual history. The general audience, on the other hand, overall has a very positive view of the film; with an 7.5 score on IMDb, an "A" rating on Cinemascore, and a 86% Audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film also became a surprise hit, grossing over $400 million worldwide.
• Don't Shoot the Message: While "This is Me" has caught on as a huge anthem for any and all marginalized groups, this hasn't saved it from criticism that it's still from a movie where P.T. Barnum's exploitation of otherness is whitewashed into a Be Yourself story.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Bearded Lady is particularly well-liked by audiences in part because she gets to lead the show's Signature Song.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film was moderately successful in its native United States, but in the United Kingdom (and Ireland, to a lesser extent), it's become THE definition of a musical done right, and no words can even begin to describe how much of an impact the film has left on its public.
  • Firstly, while the critical consensus in the United States was mainly mixed, in the United Kingdom, it was universally praised by critics and audiences alike for its groundbreaking plot, choreography and especially the Awesome Music.
  • Then, it performed exceptionally well at the UK box-office, despite initially opening at #3. Nevertheless, because of the praise received for the movie, cinema-goers allowed its to reach #1 on weekend six, in the process causing a 7.3% rise from the previous weekend. It managed to stay in the top 5 films in the UK and Ireland until it finally dropped out in its thirteenth weekend. In the end, it grossed around $64.3 million (£49.4 million), much higher than all but three films released in 2017^note Only Dunkirk, Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Last Jedi were able to outgross it!
  • Next we have the soundtrack album. Saying it was an extraordinary success in the United Kingdom is a complete understatement. After being released, it went straight to the top of the UK Albums Chart and stayed there for eleven consecutive weeks, having the longest broken run at #1 for an album since Adele's 21 in 2011. Then, it continued to linger in the top 5 for many more months, even recapturing the #1 spot for Christmas 2018. After a whole year and twenty-seven non-consecutive weeks at #1, it became the biggest-selling album of 2018 in the UK, outsold the US in terms of copies, and had the longest non-consecutive streak at the top position in 50 years. And it's still in the top 5 as of April 2019!
  • And did we mention the sheer successes of the songs within the album? Eight of them charted in the UK top 100 chart, with five in the top 40 and three in the top 20. The highest-charting of the lot, "This Is Me", peaked at #3 in the UK while in the US, it only reached #58. This lead it to become the fourth biggest single of the year over there. This was followed by "Rewrite the Stars" at #16 and "The Greatest Show" at #20. The "re-imagined" album, featuring covers of the film's songs by contemporary artists, was equally successful as six of the songs charted in the top 100 (with another, "This Is Me" as covered by Kesha, charting at #54 in Scotland) with two in the top 20: James Arthur and Anne-Marie's "Rewrite the Stars" at #7 and P!nk's "A Million Dreams" at #11. These songs are still receiving radio airplay, by the way.
  • The soundtrack eventually made headlines in January 2019 when, after 28 weeks at #1, it had spent more weeks at the top spot on the albums chart than all but one album by The Beatles^note The album specifically mentioned was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had equally lasted 28 weeks. Even Hugh Jackman himself was rendered speechless at this unthinkable achievement.
• Glurge: A major factor in the film's Hype Backlash is that not only is it an Oscar Bait pop musical, but shamelessly turn P.T. Barnum into a Lovable Rogue who follows his dreams, celebrates diversity, and makes money by organizing a circus that toplines society's disabled and/or odd-looking outcasts as opposed to the shrewd businessman who exploited otherness for profit. The antagonists range from a Straw Critic to dyed-in-the-wool bigots, but the lesson Barnum ends up learning is not to aim for "respectability" when he tries to break into upper-crust society and forgets about the needs of his troupe and family. Those who don't like the movie see it as phony and manipulative, particularly with its platitudes about acceptance and pride as they are undercut by the film not letting the audience get to know the circus performers as individuals and instead focusing the bulk of the narrative on the White Male Lead and his redemption, with its choice of villains shaming the viewer into not questioning/analyzing what they're watching lest they be seen as enemies of joy and diversity. It's also a frustrating movie if you care about the history - Barnum's commercialised attitude is sanded down whereas Jenny Lind bares basically no resemblance to the real Jenny Lind at all, and the attitudes of Victorians towards the relationship between Anne and Phillip would have been far harsher than they're shown in the movie.
• Heartwarming Moments: At the end of the film, Phineas leaves the new show to attend his daughters' ballet recital, arriving on Jumbo the Elephant just to make his daughters squeal.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Barnum stating that land in lower Manhattan is worth almost nothing and easily affordable. Doubles as a Historical In-Joke.
  • Seeing Zac Efron and Zendaya Coleman's characters hitting it off is a little amusing if you know that they both had their star making roles on the Disney Channel — that is, High School Musical and Shake it Up respectively.
  • Efron dropped out of the Footloose remake because he didn't want to be typecast in musicals (this was on the heels of the aforementioned HSM and Hairspray). Now he's in one again.
  • Bennett's disdain for the shows proved rather prophetic of some critics who didn't like the film. And the film then grossed over $400 million worldwide, becoming Critic-Proof just like the circus.
  • Barnum takes in an assortment of genetically or otherwise deviated people who become a Family of Choice — did Wolverine unknowingly jack the role of Professor X?
  • Both Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II won Emmys in 2020, which is funny considering they played brother and sister in this movie.
• Hollywood Homely: Aside from their one deformity (being a bearded lady, a dwarf, albinos, having a third leg, etc.), the circus troupe is mostly average-looking to attractive, people who for the most part no one would really bat an eye at if it wasn't for their one physical trait. Some of them don't even have a physical trait that makes them "ugly"; they just dress a bit weird (the tattooed guy, the bald black lady, and the samurai all come to mind). The only possible exception is Charles, whose physical trait isn't something you could easily take away to make him look much more attractive. But even then, one could make an argument even that he could be considered Ugly Cute.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Even diehard fans of the film have said that the story and characters are nothing special (especially considering the liberties it takes with its main character) and that they mainly love it for the spectacular songs, choreography, and production design.
• Moe: Little Caroline is just adorable whenever she dances. And of course the fact that her peers look down on her only makes her more endearing.
• Narm Charm: The way The Tattooed Irishman is dressed, it's hard not to expect him to shout at some point "THIS IS SPARTA!"
• Older Than They Think:
  • Did you know that the conjoined twins, who appear in non-speaking parts in this movie, actually headlined a musical of their own?
  • This also isn't the first musical biography of P.T. Barnum. That would be 1980's Barnum with a book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart, and music by Cy Coleman, starring Glenn Close and Jim Dale in the title role. And while it still portrays its title character as a Lovable Rogue, it also doesn't skimp on the fact that he was, first and foremost, a shameless con artist who was Only in It for the Money. The biggest hit from the show was "Join the Circus".
    • Hell, this wouldn't even be the first film adaptation of Barnum's time in the circus. That award goes to 1934's The Mighty Barnum.
• One-Scene Wonder: The bartender with the large 1880s baseball mustache (played by Daniel Campos, who was the assistant choreographer) while Barnum tries to convince Carlyle to join the circus as they sing "The Other Side" doesn't say a single word — and still manages to nearly steal the scene. Critics have singled him out as a highlight of choreography, even in negative reviews of the film.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Even some people who like or even love the movie admit that it's silly that the movie casts Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams as childhood lovers.
  • 4 foot tall Sam Humphrey as the 3 foot tall Tom Thumb. To make him 3 foot tall, he had to perform on his knees the entire time he was filming, meaning he couldn't dance so the character either conveniently leaves or disappears altogether whenever everyone else starts dancing for most of his screentime (From Now On excluded, though even that song had a couple shots where it looked like they were trying to hide his "dancing"). It makes one wonder why they bothered casting him and didn't just cast someone closer to 3 foot tall like Verne Troyer or even Warwick Davis instead, though even they were slightly taller than 2'6" Charles Stratten. The difference was that Sam Humphrey looked like Stratten, and most importantly, he could sing.
    Humphrey: Here's another fun fact as well–I actually had to play the character for the entire film on my knees. I had to learn on how to walk on my knees and for long periods of time. It was quite exhausting and mentally draining—along with being physically draining.
  • After Broadway actor Jeremy Jordan said that he originally did the demos for PT and performed as Phillip in the greenlighting performance, many of his fans (and Broadway fans in general) believed he should've gotten the part over Zac Efron.
• Retroactive Recognition: Natasha Liu Bordizzo had a small role in the film as Deng Yan, an acrobat and swordsman. She would later star in The Society, Day Shift, and would later be cast as Sabine Wren in Ahsoka.
• She Really Can Act:
  • Zendaya is not only showcased for her singing and trapeze stuntwork, she also manages to portray a lot of subtle emotion — often just through facial expressions alone.
  • A different example with Michelle Williams, whose acting talents were not in doubt. But rather she shocked everyone with her singing, prompting a few people wondering if it was really her.
• Signature Scene: Every musical number can be defined by one or two shots of the video:
  • The spinning embrace in "Rewrite the Stars".
  • The transition from the streets to the ring in "This is Me".
  • The Oner at the end of the movie.
  • The rooftop dancing in front of an enormous moon in A Million Dreams.
• Signature Song: "This is Me", to the point that it got a Golden Globe award for Best Original Song and numerous fan covers along with comments on YouTube explaining how much this song means to them. "The Greatest Show", "A Million Dreams", "Rewrite The Stars", and "Never Enough" are also strong contenders.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • During "This is Me", Tom/Charles disappears and re-appears throughout the scene, especially when the characters start dancing, to hide the fact that, as the actor is spending the movie on his knees and has a pair of knees digitally inserted to make him look even shorter, he can't really dance like everyone else can. He does dance a little bit in From Now On but his dancing is limited to swaying his arms back and forth and kicking his "legs" a few times while everyone else performs much more complex looking dance steps. The movie even seems to be trying to hide the limitations this effect has on his dancing in this scene by hiding him behind a pole in a couple shots. And, in Come Alive, he's too busy riding on the horse while everyone else dances, most likely again to hide the fact that, yeah, the effect they used to make him look shorter makes him unable to do much dancing.
    • The limitations of the effects they used for Charles show throughout the movie, even outside of dancing. He mostly just stands or walks throughout his entire screentime and it seems like the filmmakers try to avoid having him do any physical activity as much as possible. During the fire scene, he's briefly shown being carried out of the circus rather than just running out, Come Alive shows him being picked up and put on the horse by Barnum, instead of jumping onto the horse while standing on, say, a box, to most likely make something easier for the animators to animate (as they would just have to animate his legs), and he doesn't take part in the fight scene with the circus troupe and the protestors, probably so they wouldn't have to have him fight on his legs.
    • Even when he does do some physical activity, the effects to make it look like he's doing those activities are obvious. When he rides on the horse, he suddenly becomes taller for a second, as the actor's real legs are probably being shown. When he's riding on the baby elephant, not only is the elephant obviously CGI but he's entirely CGI as well (not helped by the fact that, when he's laughing in the scene, it's pretty obvious his laughing was added in post). And when he's bending down to sit on Barnum's hat or serving drinks, Charles is obscured in darkness, to probably hide how unconvincing him bending down would look if you could see him more clearly. Also, in a non-CGI case, Charles drops the deep voice when singing This is Me and suddenly has a higher pitched voice, as that's most likely Sam's real singing voice.
  • Some of the animals, like the lions and elephants, are obviously CGI. The horse Charles rides on in particular looks like the Tristar Horse.
  • A lot of the circus troupe members, not just Tom Thumb, don't look particularly convincing. The Bearded Lady's beard is obviously pasted onto her face, the three-legged man's third leg is just a fake wooden leg that doesn't even move (and is hidden in most of the shots he's in, most likely to hide how unconvincing it looks), the Siamese twins are just two Asian actors who have their arms around their shoulders all the time, and most of the other troupe members, besides the albinos, are just able-bodied people dressed in weird costumes. The only troupe members whose oddities look fake and can get away with it are the fat guy and the tall guy, as the movie itself shows Barnum made them look taller and/or fatter by having the tall guy stand on stilts and the fat guy stuff things in his shirt to make him look bigger.
    • Averted with the Dog Boy and the Old Lady Barnum meets at the beginning, whose deformities actually do look convincing. The albinos also don't look so bad because they are played by people who actually have albinism.
  • During From Now On, the train Barnum gets on, as well as the background of the scene, looks like something out of a video game. The fact that it's immediately followed up by an (admittedly beautiful) aerial shot of the train riding doesn't help matters, as the train and background suddenly looks more realistic.
• Sweetness Aversion: People who thought Barnum's real life story would have made a far more interesting story (or even thought a movie about the circus troupe would have made for a more interesting plot) find the movie way too sugarcoated, cutesy, and sentimental. Lines like "I wanna marry Santa Claus" don't exactly help.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The fascinating people in the circus, save for Anne (whose Maligned Mixed Marriage with Phillip warrants a subplot), are sidelined in favor of Barnum and Carlyle. Ironic considering how Barnum is praised in-story for celebrating them and the whole film is framed and promoted as a celebration of diversity, yet the story sticks with the White Male Lead who takes them for granted until Act Three.
  • Many reviewers have commented that the actual historical personages in the movie are all entirely worthy of movies as they were complex, fascinating individuals. Carlyle replaces James Bailey, for instance, despite the fact he was Barnum's partner. Hell, even PT Barnum himself is arguably a more fascinating individual Antihero than the character he's portrayed as.
  • Hands up for everyone who thought O'Malley was responsible for all the money being gone during the building fire.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many critics disdained the Very Loosely Based on a True Story plot, arguing that a far more interesting film could be made from the real P.T. Barnum story — and pointing out that this trope was intentionally invoked because that story wouldn't make for a feel-good family musical. Director Michael Gracey says in his commentary on the DVD that they invoked this because Barnum rewrote his autobiography twice, and burned the original prints, to make his life seem more fantastic than he was, so they felt that the movie they made would be one that Barnum himself would make, i.e., casting a man with a heroic build like Hugh to play himself, writing his late wife into the movie to show his fidelity, having a lesson about how family is more important than fame, etc.
  • Barnum's relationship with slavery obviously isn't a good feel-good movie subject. While he tortured and abused a woman he illegally enslaved (he lived in the North) in the 1830's, he was so disgusted with himself and slavery, he spent the latter half of his life tirelessly campaigning against slavery and using his showmanship skills to have it outlawed nationwide. He even played a not-insignificant role in getting the 13th Amendment ratified. In addition, he campaigned hard for women's suffrage.
  • There are some who feel that Charity’s father deserved a more satisfying scene where he gets put on his place, like his own daughter calling him out for being an asshole to Barnum.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Pretty much everyone in the cast and crew (except for maybe the screenwriters) but ESPECIALLY Hugh Jackman, whose passion for the project not only shows on-screen but off-screen as well, as he spent 8 years trying to get the movie made. There's just so much energy, though, that can save a movie with such a problematic premise that does a terrible job at justifying itself. Though YMMV on whether it's actually bad.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jenny's indiscretion with PT Barnum is presented as Laser-Guided Karma, and it ties into the Darkest Hour part of the narrative. Except it's entirely possible that PT never had any romantic interest in Jenny and she only assumed he did, yet she freely made a pass at him. He promptly turns her down. While being upset is perfectly reasonable, and one could see how she might feel used (as she accuses him of doing), deliberately trying to sabotage his reputation because she was denied a man with a wife and two children is going a bit too far.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The real Barnum called himself "only ever a showman" and knew from the get-go that he was peddling hoaxes and sideshow attractions, complete with mistreatment of animals, for entertainment's sake. The trailers paint his creation of the world-famous circus as gathering a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to give them a place where they can be themselves while showing the public at large that they are just as worthy of respect as anyone "normal". The actual movie still has Barnum as a shyster whose quick wit and ability to read people for all intents and purposes hoodwinks the circus performers into joining them rather than stay in their shadowed and ignored stations. The performers must take it upon themselves to shuck society's opinion of them after Barnum shuts them out of Jenny Lind's first-performance after-party. Barnum's Heel Realization conveniently comes when the people he's shunned and scammed are the only ones who'll have anything to do with him anymore.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Nobody was expecting total historical accuracy down to the kind of lace, but in some scenes it's like they weren't even trying. This dress◊ of Jenny Lind's, for example, looks like something from the nearest Anne Taylor. (At least her hair is up?) Word of God has stated that this was invoked intentionally in order to give the movie a more fantastical feel and make it less grounded in reality, as well as the costumes needing to work around various choreography requirements.
• The Woobie: All the performers to an extent, given that they're shunned for being different. Anne, however, gets more screen time, showing what she has to put up with in everyday life. Just look at when she's about to go to the theatre. She sounds so timid when saying P.T. reserved a ticket for her, like she expects the box office clerk to look at her sideways.

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