Film

The Greatest Showman

Name: The Greatest Showman
Genre: Drama
Released: 2017
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya

A glossy, unapologetically maximalist musical about P.T. Barnum building a circus empire out of outcasts and oddities. The La La Land songwriting team supplies the emotional engine while the real, thornier history gets sanded down into pure crowd-pleasing spectacle. It's for anyone who wants two hours of stadium-sized feeling — swelling choruses, big dance numbers, unembarrassed sincerity — rather than a rigorous account of the man himself.

TMDb rating

7.9

If you liked this

La La Land2016

If you loved how the songs did the emotional heavy lifting here, this is the purest modern version of that trick — original music, dazzling colour, and a bittersweet ending that actually earns its tears.

But It's melancholy where Showman is triumphant; the ending won't give you the lump-in-throat uplift you're craving.

Moulin Rouge!2001

Baz Luhrmann's jukebox spectacle is the film Showman is clearly cribbing its DNA from — pop songs remixed into new arrangements, breathless editing, and a circus-adjacent Parisian nightclub dripping in the same maximalist glitter.

But It's faster, weirder and considerably sadder — this one doesn't pull back from tragedy the way Showman does.

Rocketman2019

Another glittery song-and-dance biopic that cheerfully bends the facts of a real life into pure spectacle — Elton John's story told with the same unembarrassed emotional maximalism and stadium-sized set pieces.

But It's more explicit about addiction and sexuality, and far less interested in a tidy redemptive bow.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Freaks1932

Barnum's sideshow performers get a triumphant, self-actualizing musical number in Showman; Browning's pre-Code horror cast real sideshow performers and asked audiences to find their humanity through empathy rather than spectacle — same raw material, opposite intention.

A genuinely strange piece of cinema history — Tod Browning cast actual carnival performers and built a horror film around the idea that the real monsters are the 'normal' people exploiting them, decades before anyone thought to make that point sincerely.

But It's sixty-four minutes of grainy, unsettling black-and-white horror with dated effects — nothing here will make you want to sing along.

Bohemian Rhapsody2018

For the crowd-pleasing biopic instinct: a real band, real hits, and a triumphant Live Aid finale engineered to make you cry and cheer at once, much like Showman's own big closing number.

But It fudges the timeline and softens the messier parts of its subject's life almost as freely as Showman fudges Barnum's.

Hairspray2007

All the sugar-rush choreography and big-hearted underdog energy of Showman, but funnier and set to sixties pop pastiche — a scrappy outsider using a stage to change how people see her.

But It's broader and campier throughout — don't expect the same swings into po-faced sincerity.

Mamma Mia!2008no page yet

Pure, unfiltered joy-machine cinema — if you just want the feeling Showman's big numbers gave you, stretched across an entire film, this ABBA jukebox musical delivers it shamelessly.

But The plot is thinner than tissue paper and the singing is deliberately, gloriously ropey in places.

Dreamgirls2006

Swaps the circus for the record industry but keeps the same engine — ambition, showmanship, and a soundtrack built to flatten you, especially whenever Jennifer Hudson opens her mouth.

But It trades uplift for a much harder look at exploitation and betrayal within the industry it depicts.

Chicago2002

Same conviction that a musical number can be entertainment and indictment at once — showbiz as moral rot, dressed up in dazzling choreography and murder.

But It's sharper, nastier and far more cynical about fame than anything Showman allows itself to be.

Sing Street2016

A much smaller, scrappier film with the same faith that music and self-invention can be a way out — a Dublin teenager starting a band to impress a girl and escape his circumstances.

But No big-budget spectacle here — it's low-key, wistful, and Irish indie in scale rather than showbiz-huge.

Yankee Doodle Dandy1942

Decades before Showman, Warner Bros. did exactly the same trick — take a real American entertainer, smooth over the ugly parts of his life, and stage his career as one triumphant musical number after another.

James Cagney's Oscar-winning turn as George M. Cohan is the blueprint for the feel-good showbiz biopic — a genuine wartime morale-booster built entirely on unembarrassed, flag-waving spectacle.

But It's black-and-white, over eighty years old, and its patriotism is laid on thicker than anything modern audiences are used to.