'The Greatest Showman' turns Hugh Jackman's P.T. Barnum into a hero, and cons the audience in the process
In a more honest or at least more interesting version of "The Greatest Showman," P.T. Barnum, famed American ringmaster and skilled exploiter of misfits and outcasts, would have been the villain rather than the hero.
But where would be the fun, the uplift or the box-office potential in that?
Like a few other recent movies about entertainers blessed with more ambition than talent ("Birdman" and "Florence Foster Jenkins" come to mind), this one knows there's no quicker way to get you on a huckster's side than to pit him against an even bigger fraud.
Which is to say, a critic.
The reviewer in question is
