P.T. Barnum

Although I cannot argue with the former comment about this miniseries a bit boring, I feel it's also misleading. Certainly, it needn't have been 4 hours long, but if you look past that, and watch it as the costume drama it is, you'd probably enjoy it. The sets are magnificent, and the acting isn't as bad as the former comment suggested.

But what is stunning is Barnum himself, and all the things that we take for granted, that he started or invented - like Madison Square Garden, the permanent circus, the terms "rain check", "grandstanding", and "press conference" (as well as the very notion of a press conference), but also modern advertising - including full page ads, creating a demand, and infotainment. That's the real strength of the miniseries - Barnum's optimistic view of the world and his ideas of marketing and showmanship.

So, if you're interested in how show business started to be a legitimate business, you should see it, even if you shouldn't place it at the top of you "to watch"-list.

I'm afraid I only caught the second half of this miniseries, but what I saw was appalling! Doing a movie about Barnum is such a great opportunity to produce something colorful and exciting and hilarious. When will I learn not to waste time on TV miniseries? while I haven't had the opportunity to see the old 1930's film with Wallace Beery playing Barnum, it MUST have outdone this one. Quite honestly, why should I be so enthralled by the day-to-day minutiae of the private lives of Barnum and his relatives? It only makes a legendary, larger-than-life character that much more mundane.

Typically, we would see about 25 seconds of a routine circus act, followed by 25 minutes of tedious soap opera in period costume. Ah, we get an understanding of the personal demons that drove the man! Oh,Blah...blah...blah!!! In a biography of Barnum, I expect to see outrageous flim-flams and the dumbest of rubes, bearded ladies, flashy and dangerous aerial acts, elephants -- and lots of them, dammit! This was the greatest show on earth. And freaks! A gifted screenwriter could do a whole hour on how one finds a set of Siamese twins, how they're recruited and under what circumstances they've been living, how they're exhibited, what their personalities are like, what they and Barnum thought of each other, what the public reaction was, etc., etc. These aspects of his life and career seem to me a lot more interesting than the fact that he didn't get along with all his daughters or in-laws very well, or that his wife was ill.

Sorry I got carried away.

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed Beau Bridges' (and his son's) portrayal of P.T. Barnum in this well written, well acted, and well directed production. We felt it provided an excellent insight into PT's feelings and motivation. His need for approval by the "upper class" (George Hamilton's character in particular) was illustrated quite eloquently, as was his eventualacceptance.

While it may not have been 100% historically accurate, it was quite refreshing to see a well made movie that did not depend on gratuitous sex, language, and violence. This is a film that can be enjoyed by the entire family.

Well, for as much as this causes you to want to try to enjoy the film and to hope to find its bright spots, the naysayers appear to call this one right.

This portrays Phineas Taylor Barnum and many around him as irresponsible, manipulative scoundrels with hearts of gold in a cumbersome production which dwells on the negative, lacks continuity, fails to identify many characters, leaves many unexplained details, doesn't nearly live up to its promotional hype, and defeats the purpose of Barnum entertainment value.

While it appears to strive laboriously for factual accuracy, it pales in comparison, for example, with "The Mighty Barnum" (1934), starring Wallace Beery as Phineas T. Barnum, Janet Beecher as Nancy Barnum, Rochelle Hudson as Ellen, Virginia Bruce as Jenny Lind, and Adolphe Menjou as Bailey Walsh.

While the 1934 account takes creative liberties of its own to combine fact with fiction, a familiar cast and steady script provides for entertaining character studies therein.

"P.T. Barnum" (1999), on the other hand, suffers from an awkward script, random editing and haphazard direction, which leaves more questions than answers, thus defeating the purpose of a Biopic. It's not that they don't seem to try very hard to please, but they do focus on the negatives here, much more than the positives.

This begins in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in April of 1891, as the faithful Nancy (Fish) (Stephanie Morgenstern) and Jeremiah (Philip Akin) care for an aged P.T. Barnum (Beau Bridges), who reaches for a copy of his autobiography, to reminisce upon portions of his life, as told in flashback scenes.

35 years earlier, in March of 1856, onlookers refer to the Barnum autobiography, as P.T. enters the New York City Courthouse as defendant in a civil tort trial generated by creditor plaintiffs demanding his repayment of promissory notes.

True to form, P.T. Barnum exhibits his resourcefulness through his speech to put the prosecuting attorney in his place, but we see little of Barnum's innovativeness in the aftermath.

George Hamilton, as spotlighted in the promos, has a cameo role here as Francis Olmsted, a Barnum creditor, and is seen again briefly in the next scene at a board meeting, before he suddenly disappears from this very long and meandering film.

Now, besides extensive scenes with the dysfunctional family, with the elder daughters' constantly blaming Barnum for their mother, Charity's, ill health, and his negligence in relocating her from New York City, even after he purchases another Connecticut estate, this shows very little of the Barnum Museum, Hippodrome and Circus. Once it introduces them, it breaks away for more of the same extensive family squabbles. Again, Drama, Drama in lieu of Entertainment.

And what about those fires? More than once, a fire breaks out, as in the NYC residence during the December, 1857 sequence, and at the Museum a bit later, but the action doesn't resume after the cliffhanger scenes, and nothing is explained in the way of loss. At once point, the family is summoned to a memorial service, but it's not clear who passes. Are these tragedies symbolic of Barnum's resilience to persevere?

If this were a Murder Mystery, with all of these ongoing tensions with discontented creditors and family members, one would expect bodies to be turning up right and left, but most Murder Mysteries don't even present as much fodder for motives to smack someone with the fireplace poker as this "Entertainer" Biopic does.

Once it bounces back to 1891, for more time to reflect on the past, goofs begin to show with problems with age progression makeup. P.T. Barnum is supposed to be two years younger than Charity, whom we may leave alone with her age progression makeup because of her ill health.

Nancy is supposed to be forty years younger then P.T., but instead of appearing about forty in 1891, she appears late-sixtyish.

Jeremiah appears as a young man when P.T. is about fifty, and yet when P.T. approaches eighty, Jeremiah appears about in his seventies. But when the narrative flashes back to P.T. in his fifties, Jeremiah retains his seventyish makeup to appear elder than P.T.

And yet the daughters and their husbands don't age. It's as though they waste the budget on big scenes from which they break and walk away immediately and cannot afford enough makeup to make the rounds.

So, this is one of those productions which doesn't live up to its hype, but rather makes you long for commercial breaks, hoping that they'll advertise something along the lines of a pain assuager which actually works rather quickly because this film doesn't fit together very well.

I gave up on this after an hour. My sister tried to watch it while I worked at the computer. Although I love the circus this was a farce. It was over acted as if the actors could talk over the poorly written script. The discussions in the family felt unproductive. After a while, who cares? I wanted to see P.T. Barnum, not the Barnum family. I could see that type of conversation across the street. After a while I actually felt myself getting stressed out from the arguing.

* of 5