The movie tricks movie goers into believing its saying something or anything, while doing nothing new.

Rating: 3/10 (6 November 2018)

Ill go ahead and put aside the historical inaccuracies of this movie, although those alone are enough for a bad review, as if America has not had enough rewriting or history through pop culture.
This movie fails to be anything more then an excuse to sell music and fulfill Hugh Jack mans wet dream of a musical. One of the first area's where this movie fails is in the setting and tone of setting. The music is not at all consistent with the already inconsistent time period. Although this movie takes place in the 1800s, there is no way of knowing by listening to the pop-tastic soundtrack that was begging to get some top 40 hits. They did not even attempt to represent the setting.
This movie tries really hard to convince you that its a Icarus-esk story of a man climbing to great heights, only to fall and rise again under a more humble light. P.T. Barnum, never truly falls. He gets everything he wants and more with his circus and international show. The international show in particular is treated as if to be a bad thing regardless of international tours and shows being commonplace in modern American culture from large pop artists. Even when he has a what-appears-to-be affair with the woman he was touring with, instead of making him truly flawed and making the story make some since, they simply give him the cop-out excuse of "he wasn't in to the kiss." This is only one example of the movie having a plot that requires Barnum falling from grace, but does not him too in the same breath. What a garbage movie.