‘Greatest Showman’ starring Hugh Jackman as Barnum magnificently idiotic

There’s idiotic, and there’s magnificent, but “The Greatest Showman” is that special thing that happens sometimes. It’s magnificently idiotic. It’s an awful mess, but it’s flashy. The temptation is to cover your face and watch it through your fingers, because it’s so earnest and embarrassing and misguided — and yet it’s well-made.

People actually intended this, to make exactly this movie, and Hugh Jackman, as P.T. Barnum, puts it over. Thus, we get the perfect realization of a really bad idea.

This modern musical, made directly for film, tells the story of Phineas Taylor Barnum, the 19th century impresario, except that it doesn’t really tell Barnum’s story.