‘The Greatest Showman’ Reviews: Is Hugh Jackman’s New Movie Worth Watching?

“The Greatest Showman” definitely isn’t the greatest movie of the year. Critics released their reviews Wednesday, and they aren’t exactly raving about the film.

The musical movie follows the life of P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), the real life man who created the circus as we know it today. He wants to make a better life for his family, and he decides to go forth with his crazy idea for an entertaining show.

Critics don’t hate the movie. The reviewers all note that the cast is charming and the songs are catchy. While it’s a fun way to spend a couple hours, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be considered “the greatest” in any field.

Variety’s Owen Gleiberman believes audiences will love “The Greastest Showman,” but he said that it’s not a deep movie at all. “Yet ‘The Greatest Showman,’ while it’s all but destined to become the crowd-pleaser of the holiday season (and, just possibly, a surprise awards contender), lacks the darkly audacious grandeur that made ‘Moulin Rouge!’ a work of movie-musical art. The film’s conflicts have a storybook simplicity,” he noted.

Leah Greenblatt, from Entertainment Weekly, also acknowledged that P.T. Barnum’s story should have had more drama. However, his life seems to come easily. “There must have been real collateral damage from the kind of single-minded ambition that drove a man like Barnum, but there’s nothing here that a tip of his top hat and a step-ball-change can’t seem to smooth over by the next scene,” she wrote.

According to New York Times writer Jason Zinoman, the conflicts that exist are predictable, but this is a movie with several fun moments. “The repercussions of this domestic drama are predictable, but at least they do lead to a delightful redemptive scene (one of the movie’s few pleasingly dreamlike moments), when Barnum uses an elephant as a New York taxi to make an appointment on time. It’s utter nonsense — imagine finding a parking space — but that’s exactly what a movie about the self-proclaimed ‘Prince of Humbugs’ needs,” he acknowledged.

Critics know that Jackman has talent, but TheWrap’s Robert Abele claims that it’s wasted on this movie. “The biggest missed opportunity is Jackman’s,” he explained. “Had the limber, charismatic star-producer, who shepherded this project for years, simply filmed himself in his living room performing the Broadway musical ‘Barnum’ — not a great show, but infinitely more enjoyable — you might have something worthy of his traditional song-and-dance acumen. ‘The Greatest Showman’ instead just sticks him on a treadmill of vacuous energy and cardboard-cut emotion that squanders his natural charm. He’s left coming off as a tour guide of hearty encouragement instead of a flesh-and-blood pusher of hoaxes, thrills, and wonder.”

However, not even the upbeat dance numbers impressed the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney. “They all sound like bland imitations of chart hits by Katy Perry or Demi Lovato or Kelly Clarkson. Catchy, like Chlamydia.”

David Ehrlich of Indie Wire praised Keala Settle’s performance, but he noted that she and the other circus “freaks” don’t really get the development they need. “Still, even though Settle leads the cast in a rousing performance of the anthemic ‘This Is Me,’ it’s hard to buy ‘The Greatest Showman’ as much of an empowerment story when most of the circus performers are denied even a sliver of personal agency, their various storylines congealing into one as they accept their few minutes of screen time,” he notes.

However, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who gave “The Greatest Showman” three out of five stars, writes that despite the lack of depth and meaning, audiences will walk away happy. “It’s a movie which in some ways resembles Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Moulin Rouge’ from 2001: a celebratory and euphoric entertainment which is not overly concerned with dramatic or psychological consistency. It is all about the mood, the feel, the general sugar rush of euphoria,” he wrote.

“The Greatest Showman” is now in theaters.