An OK musical, but a dismal hostorical film

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2019)

Let's start with the positives, The choreography is good, I kinda liked Zac Efron's character, and I thought the child acting was fine.
My main problems with this film stems from how pandering and inoffensive it tries to be.
The real life P.T. Barnum was a slimey crooked scumbag who tried to get rich off anyone, he even coined the phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute." So when this story tries to depict him as an innocent guy trying to "do the right thing" I can't help but feel the film is trying to pathetically bamboozle me in to sympathizing for a scumbag character. It also bothers me that the inter-racial relationship between Zac's character and the trapeze artist is glossed over, that would be interesting to explore that dynamic in the late 1800s, but no we have to keep things simple for mass audience appeal...
Now to be fair, there are those audience members who don't give a crap about historical accuracy, and that's fine. However even with out the historical inaccuracies, the film still fails for me due to the overly simplistic nature of the plot. P.T. is poor boy, poor boy likes rich girl, rich girl likes poor boy but rich parents don't approve. The same tired plot with an unrealistic main character. (For example, when EVERYONE goes to visit the Queen of England, in real life it was just P.T. and the Little Person Napoleon.
Another thing that bothers me is the CGI in this movie, it all looks so fake, even when they're in physical locations, the backgrounds and everything look so phoney. Also the Little Person actor looked digitally altered somehow, and his real voice was badly dubbed over and looks terrible.
Oh and of course the critic in the film is joyless and unhappy (what the studio thinks the naysayers of this film are like). Which is a cliche that always bothers me, but after ragging on P.T. the whole movie, in the last 15 minutes he complements P.T. and his show..... for some reason.
Anyhoo, aside from one or two decent songs/dances (the bar scene in particular was very nice). I wasn't impressed by this film, it's better than Marry Poppins Returns, but it's sure no Chicago or Rocky Horror Picture Show.