As much as The Greatest Showman delivers greater performances particularly from most of the cast with the likes of Hugh Jackman (who never disappoints), Zac Efron, Keala Seattle, Zendaya, Michelle Williams and others and even the music and soundtrack that was supposedly to be looking and sounding as "superb", this movie suffers a greater let-down and a wrecking mess in which greater performances from the cast couldn't redeem it.

First of all, the direction is really off the rails given the fact that the film's director Michael Gracey whose track record was based on directing music videos was unable to deliver a solid direction that could have made the film more livid and intriguing, and not to mentioned it's stale, weak and mediocre and coming off as a Baz Luhrmann-Moulin Rouge style knock-off. Second, the writing is rifled with major historical inaccuracies considering that this film is based on a true story of P. T. Barnum and his circus and its depiction of the story made it uninspired, inaccurate and at worse, erroneous given the main character's background being seen with darker and questionable history and even dreadfully ignored the circus' dark past in favor of a fictitious cringeworthy and shmaltzy depiction. Worse, this film's plot is convoluted and nonsensical. To add insult to injury, the terrible racist depictions of stereotypes are all over the place and its message of inclusivity and diversity are horribly forced and fake, to the point it comes off as insulting and degrading to the audiences' intelligence and minds.

Third has to do with another questionable performance from Rebecca Ferguson whose portrayal of Jenny Lind whose character was considered to be as the "Swedish Nightingale", suffers a glaring issue within its characterization and its portrayal, particularly with the singing voice despite the fact that the singing voice was being dubbed by Loren Allred and not by Ferguson, who didn't commit herself to singing on her own and while her acting is still appreciated, the singing voice made it another additional problem for the film's historical inaccuracies.

Fourth, despite its solid cinematography and choreography; the film really came out as style over substance (of which the style really comes off as ironically awful), favoring performances as well artful and artistic merits over story, depth and character development, making this film a flashy and a disappointing mess. Even the editing and the pacing made it more dreadfully convoluted, confusing and dull, as well as hard to watch, and not to mentioned that despite the film's intriguing costume and production design, its designs came off as unreal, awkward, cheap-looking and pantomime, and not in a good way. Another terrible thing would be that the CGI in the movie, is also terrible-looking, fake, and unconvincing .

Lastly, what's so disappointing and perplexing is that the Pasek & Paul duo made a disappointing contribution to this film and not to mentioned that they've really dropped a ball on this movie with the songs and the music (following their great track record for La La Land) and much of these songs they've written in this movie (despite these songs were entertaining), really comes off as totally generic, bland, fake, forced, contrived, forgettable, and at worse, very terribly annoying. Even "This is Me" song is also considered as forgettable, forced, fake, overproduced, over-egged, stupid, and idiotic, despite the ironic fact that it's supposed to serve as an anthem for the prejudiced and disabled, which is just only seen as utterly laughable and cringeworthy.

Clearly, The Greatest Showman is truly a dishonorable, disgraceful and terribly a laughing stock to the contribution of the revival of contemporary musical films and really an abominable travesty to the superior La La Land and other great musicals including Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, and Dreamgirls.

With all these problems that's plaguing the film's quality, this film is definitely not recommended to be seen even if anyone loved this film's music and soundtrack but honestly speaking that The Greatest Showman in its soundtrack is considered the worst soundtrack being made in this decade.