Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) - 2 stars

One Sentence Plot Summary: We follow a traveling circus from town to town as various performers fall in and out of love with each other.

Starring: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Gloria Grahame, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart

Best of: It has its truly entertaining moments...mostly asurrounding its too often ignored central storyline. Also, the awesomely cheesy special effects during the train wreck scene.

Worst of: I'm not convinced Charlton Heston could act. It fills maybe an hour of its considerable length with slow, needless shots of circus performances. The movie pulls off what I previously thought impossible and offers a bland Jimmy Stewart performance. It took covering his face in full clown make-up the entire time, but they pulled it off. Also, the awesomely cheesy special effects during the train wreck scene.

I would have liked it better if: it hadn't pushed the "show must go on" theme quite so hard in the end. Really...no one is putting on a circus show hours after a disaster cripples or kills half the performers.

No comments:

Post a Comment