The Greatest Showman
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: December 20, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
22
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 22, 2017
But for sheer, go-for-broke nuttiness, The Greatest Showman stands alone in the landscape of this holiday season’s crop of movies, and I urge you to give it a chance. Read full review
60
Time OutPhil de SemlyenDec 21, 2017
But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show. Read full review
60
UproxxEmma StefanskyDec 21, 2017
Like Barnum’s menagerie, it’s escapism at its finest, tossing away the shackles of realism to dazzle us with this strange spectacle, leaving us to wonder afterwards if it was really worth it. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 21, 2017
It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it (or Jackman, Efron and the rest can, anyway). And Barnum would have loved it. Read full review
60
Vanity FairRichard LawsonDec 20, 2017
The film may be a vessel for some noxious, platitudinous cynicism, but there’s nevertheless something still quaint about it. It mostly just wants you to have a nice time, it insists; to feel cheered and uplifted as a big, lumbering elephant carries us off a cliff. Read full review
60
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyDec 20, 2017
Don’t get me wrong, the Hugh Jackman-led P.T. Barnum circus musical is a bad movie, but one that’s just enjoyably bad enough to keep you entertained. If you loathe musicals, this definitely ain’t for you. But if you indulge in gaudy show tunes, and can relinquish all desire for a logical plot and developed characters, then, in the melodically whispered words of Hugh Jackman, The Greatest Showman is everything you ever want, it’s everything you ever need, it’s where you want to be. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanDec 20, 2017
Alas, a winning lead performance isn’t enough when it is at the center of a flawed movie. The Greatest Showman can only hoodwink for so long before the tent collapses. This is an enjoyable film, but its rags-to-riches tale in a sanitized 19th century is extremely by-the-numbers. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 20, 2017
It’s not a film to break moulds or test boundaries. Yet Jackman’s real charm will carry you along. Read full review
58
The PlaylistWill AshtonDec 20, 2017
This whole endeavor never becomes as bewitching as it should be. It’s never more than adequate, and while P.T. Barnum will go down as one of the most interesting men in history, this film won’t pull off the same feat. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedDec 22, 2017
After seven and a half years in the making, it’s a dumb, dull, lackluster letdown. Hugh Jackman still does everything right. It’s the film that gets it all wrong. Read full review
50
SlateSam AdamsDec 21, 2017
Like Barnum himself, it’s an elegant fraud, nice enough to look at as long as you don’t look too close. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldDec 20, 2017
The Greatest Showman isn’t interested in tiny stories or character or nuance; it’s about being the biggest. In doing so, it becomes strangely small; like a magician’s rabbit, it quickly disappears. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 20, 2017
There is nothing especially wrong with it other than that for some of us it represents 105 minutes in hell. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerDec 19, 2017
For the most part, the movie’s ideas about Barnum are incredibly stupid and, at times, kind of sweet in their daftness. Read full review
45
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpDec 20, 2017
A movie that delights with spectacle as much as it repels with revisionism. Part of you will enjoy it. Another part of you will hate the part of you that enjoys it. Read full review
40
Village VoiceApril WolfeDec 21, 2017
Hugh Jackman is charming as ever, and two dance scenes are mildly inventive and well-executed, yet Jackman’s goodwill and a splash of inspired choreography are not enough to earn the greatest in the title. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaDec 20, 2017
Musicals are inherently fake — they can be ecstatically, transcendentally fake — but this is a whole other level of disingenuousness. Read full review
40
VoxAlissa WilkinsonDec 20, 2017
The Greatest Showman is not, in any traditional sense of the phrase, a biographical motion picture about P.T. Barnum. It is a high-energy, breathless fantasy. Employing sleight of hand, some fast talking, and a lot of tall tales, it exaggerates the legend until the illusion takes on a life of its own, turning into the promised “fever dream” that, while admittedly stuffed with some truly excellent musical setpieces, has something sinister at its core. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonDec 20, 2017
This strained musical is content to play to the cheap seats. Earnest in the extreme and armed with lethal amounts of razzle-dazzle, the feature debut of commercial director Michael Gracey is an all-out assault of sentiment, pop songs and dime-store psychology that’s somewhat held together by Hugh Jackman’s likably shameless portrayal of this striving charmer. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 20, 2017
The Greatest Showman, for all its celebratory razzle-dazzle, in the end feels curiously lacking in conviction. Its pleasures, namely those Pasek-Paul songs, could be removed and repurposed for another story entirely, with no discernible loss in enjoyment or meaning...Its failures are rooted in something deeper: a dispiriting lack of faith in the audience’s intelligence, and a dawning awareness of its own aesthetic hypocrisy. You’ve rarely seen a more straight-laced musical about the joys of letting your freak flag fly. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 20, 2017
But the only sense of wonder the film instils is this: if we have to wait so long between movie musicals, who on earth thought it would be a good idea to wait for this one? Read full review
40
The New York TimesJason ZinomanDec 19, 2017
An amusement park version of P.T. Barnum is fine, as far as that goes, but if you are going to aim for family-friendly fun, you need to get the fun part right. Read full review
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