Phoney as Baloney

Rating: 5/10 (12 July 2018)

We all love kids, right? So as we cherish the happy memories of yesteryear when the circus came to town (ironically the first thing that comes to mind are those gimmicky 2-for-1 tickets the local grocers would print in the weekly newspaper's food section) just as elementary school social studies class painted our country's history of American Indians with about 90% folklore, the same can be said of The Greatest Showman, a delightfully entertaining fairytale about how America's most celebrated circus began a long time ago, in a galaxy called the Milky Way. They've even managed to give Zendaya, the cute actress who livens up this film's romance despite endless Hollywood rumors alluding to problems on the set requiring extra doses of breath fresheners to help her male co-stars deal with what some have called unbearable intimate close-up scenes. They are human, after all. Overall, a disappointment.