I would have liked it more if..

Rating: 5/10 (21 October 2018)

I don't know an awful lot about the real P. T. Barnum's life so I will not compare him and the portrayl of Hugh Jackman, but I will say this: the film wants you to like him. We see him young and poor, with dreams bigger than life itself. Then we see him succeed but always want more. Then we see him fail but we are supposed to root for him again and in the end, he picks up from where he left and is rich and successful again.
Why should I like a person who took advantage of poor, unwanted people just to make money out of them? He didn't want an inclusive society, he wanted ''oddities'' that would shock people and make them laugh because he knew it sells. In his circus, he had animals as well and I'm surprised other reviewers have not mentioned this at all. Don't you know how badly animals are treated at circuses? They whip them, hit them, yell at them and God knows what else they do to them to perform. They are separated from their family, from their own kind, taken from their natural habitat only to be forced to do things that aren't natural to them. How do elephants standing on just one leg or lions jumping through fire make for a nice movie ending? It just made me sad.
Now I kind of liked the music and the movie overall was enjoyable even though I don't like musicals very much. But it was a romanticized account of a real person's life. I would have rated it higher if the movie was truthful because it could have easily been so. It could still be a wonderful musical but portray him as the man he really was.