Disclaimer: I haven't seen many musicals, so my opinion may be little ignorant.
So I went to the theater expecting a fantastic movie with great visuals and a touching message, but fantastic is too strong a word.
Not much about this movie stood out to me as good or bad except for the fantastic songs that are really well performed by the amazing cast.
This movie left me disappointed, however, which is a shame considering I've been exited about this movie all year. It's very "by the numbers." Nothing happens that you won't see coming, but the plot wasn't the only reason why I came to see this movie; I came to be inspired, but wasn't. At least not as much as I'd hoped. Most movies of this sort have the main characters overcome something to trigger an emotional response from the audience, but this movie fails to knock the characters down hard enough, making it feel more like a trip than a fall.
The story is based on real events, but this movie focuses on the wrong thing. I came to see the "freaks" come out of the shadows and go fearlessly into the spotlight, but that is the B plot, which is really weird considering that all of the advertisements seemed to imply that this movie was about the circus. Rather, it's about P. T. Barnum, a man who was born poor and never really found success until he had an idea to start the circus, which makes him very wealthy and famous. But then he starts to lose sight of his humble beginnings and the people that got him to where he is, and then he straight up abandons his friends and family midway through the movie to find more success elsewhere. He does end up returning in the end, but when he comes back they all treat him like he didn't abandon them, making the payoff to his realization that what really maters to him is his family and friends not his success lose its meaning since he did abandon them and there should have been a greater consequence to his actions.
Some of the visual effects also stuck out to me as feeling outdated, though this is only barely worth pointing out. I thought the circus part of the movie was going to be more grand, but its rather small in scale, making it feel a little anticlimactic.
I feel like I'm being way too hard on this movie because I was expecting too much. So take my criticism with a grain of salt. It wasn't terrible; it just wasn't that great. I did enjoy it for what it was, but I will probably never watch it again.