Not the greatest show on Earth, but…

FIRST things first: though it features a character named “PT Barnum”, The Greatest Showman is in no way a factual account of the life of the celebrated 19th-century circus founder and huckster.

In fact, you’ll have to set aside any unsavoury stories you may have heard about the real-life Barnum, because this one is played by the ever-charming Hugh Jackman. Resistance is futile.

Directed by first-timer Michael Gracey, the musical never aspires to be anything more than a helping of PG-rated holiday cheese – something the whole family can partake of.

For the most part, it meets that low bar, though you’ll have to suspend disbelief at every turn.

The story begins in Barnum’s boyhood when, while working in his father’s tailor shop, he falls in love with Charity, daughter of a wealthy client who would never let his only child run off with the son of tradesman.

But once the girl becomes an adult, played by Michelle Williams, she can’t be talked out of marrying her beloved. (Just forget, for a second, that Jackman is 12 years older than Williams.)

Fast-forward a few years, to when they’re parents of a couple of kids and struggling to make ends meet. As if on cue, Barnum dreams up a novel way to make money, via a museum of curiosities, complete with human attractions.

After putting out a call for unique individuals, he forms his troupe during a musical montage: there’s the bearded lady

(Keala Settle) and Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey), not to mention the sibling trapeze artists WD and Anne Wheeler (Yahya AbdulMateen II and Zendaya).

At first, Barnum isn’t entirely sensitive to the needs of his employees. When he tries to recruit the man he would christen Tom Thumb – a dwarf who isn’t interested in having people stare at him – Barnum replies: “They’re laughing anyway. You might as well get paid.”

But pretty soon he’s as progressive as a 21st-century Twitter liberal, empowering his group of former pariahs to live their best lives. You won’t find any evidence here of Joice Heth, the black slave who, in real life, was exhibited by Barnum as George Washington’s 161-year-old childhood “mammy”. Nor does the film include the public autopsy he staged after Heth’s death.

Don’t overthink it. All Showman asks of you is that you give yourself over to the holidaycheer machine, if you can. – The Washington Post