RedRider14

I really wanted to like this movie. I'd heard from friends who told me it was their favourite movie ever! The number of 10/10 reviews on this website were enough to get me excited.

However, what a mighty letdown. For once the critics git it right. This was a movie that wanted to be a musical masterpiece, but instead turned up with songs that were simply painted by numbers, nothing original here. I was hoping for another La La Land, but instead got High School Musical in a tent!

Cringingly melodramatic set pieces designed to manipulate the viewer into empathising with its characters, The Greatest Showman pretends to be a solid ode to showbusiness, but offers up no real depth at all. Poor old Hugh Jackman tried, but with the script and music he was stuck with, and the way the musical pieces were introduced within the action, it was just too twee for even he to overcome.

From a cinematography point of view, the production values were high, but that was it. Very little insight into any of the cutout characters, poor delivery of the musical component which never matched the period setting, manipulative set pieces designed to tell a character's backstory quickly without spending any time to pull away the layers,... OMG this was cynical moneygrabbing filmmaking 101.

Yeah, I really wanted to like this movie. But what I got was a glitzy, noisy, pseudo jolly but ultimately hollow rendition of a Hollywood musical. Even the ending was contrived and rushed.

Go and see a real musical, like La La Land or Nine... they had style too, but importantly they also possessed substance. Much like Barnum's business model, The Greatest Showman movie is a fake... "people know they are seeing a fake, but they'll still come!" I'm sad, but it's a fact.

I have just watched this movie for the first time and have to say it will also be my last. Please let this poor old movie rest in peace, and for heaven's sake don't encourage anyone else to watch it. Made in a time when TV was a youngster, the glamorous cinema tradition of spy vs spy was a sub genre the public must have craved.

But today things have moved on... a classic? never. The interminable time it took to dial a telephone number, or to put a key in a lock, all in a fabulous Cinemascope closeup, is just plain boring now. Film noir this is not.

We have seen it all before, and done much better than this laughable piece of sad memorabilia from the Sixties.

I would have laughed a lot more if it hadn't have been for the acting chops of the great Gordon Jackson, but even so my chuckling and head shaking hurt, because I really expected the film to be better.

Where do reviewers see the "hip" and "cool" in this movie, when all I see are hackneyed themes and melodramatic silences. I just do not want to watch an actor grind coffee beans and make a coffee in real time.

Goodbye Ipcress File, I'll leave out the Do Not Disturb sign to warn the others!

I have absolutely no idea what film most of the reviewers were watching, when they lauded this movie, but believe me when I say it stinks! I (naively) believed the reviews about how it was arty, how it was more about a political statement, a clever satire on society's class system, and a true cult classic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Really people! It was sad (not in a good way)

Wait, I get it, all those reviews were written by the aliens themselves! Trying to suck us in again.

Trust me, the wooden acting, poor makeup FX and simply pathetic casting and dialogue are unmatched, even early Doctor Who episodes were more appealing... and the payoff (it had to get better in the end didn't it?) was a limp lettuce leaf.

The only reason I gave this waste of time 6 out of ten, was because the cinematography was on the whole very good.

Please do not torture your eyeballs... leave this movie in the discount bin at KMart. Maybe it'll just disappear...