I'm Calling BS

Rating: 5/10 (15 January 2018)

All I knew going into this movie is that it was about P.T. Barnum. I had know idea it was a musical and that almost killed it for me. It wasn't even on my radar as far as movies to watch in the theater but hey I have MoviePass and this movie was showing.
Although it was a musical and I'm not a fan of musicals there were some good tunes in there. Of course the majority of the songs ran eight minutes long (seemingly) but the singing was good and the tunes were catchy. They were very modern for a movie about the 19th century but I was willing to forgive that inconsistency.
The story was a feel-good, beautiful, heart-warming story--I mean all that good stuff. This is not me being sarcastic or facetious, it had a very good message and theme. But I'm calling BS.
I'm not calling BS on all of it, just certain aspects of it. P.T. Barnum was probably an imaginative visionary that saw a way of entertaining and making money by showing the odd and freakish. What I don't believe are those that were in the P.T. Barnum circus. America has a dark past that involves the criminal mistreatment of certain people, and I don't mean bearded ladies, small people and siamese twins. A certain race of people were wholly enslaved and ostracized, yet in the mid 1800's P.T. Barnum had mostly African-Americans in his shows?? Get real.
And I don't know much about P.T. Barnum but my guess would be that he was out to line his own pockets first, second and last and whatever it took to do that he would do. Did he bring some joy to the world? Probably. I still doubt that he had one joyous jubilant staff that couldn't wait to show off their oddities. The movie was too harmonious and sanctified to be about real events. Such a movie in and of itself is excellent, just don't revolve it around real people and real events.