The movie's plot does not quite hold all this pageantry together, but De Mille's scripters and actors enter into the thing in the proper flamboyant spirit.
Comment
02/18/09
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
39 %
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted: 23
Fresh: 9
Rotten:14
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Consensus: The Greatest Show on Earth is melodramatic, short on plot, excessively lengthy and bogged down with clichés, but not without a certain innocent charm.
Runtime: 2 hrs 32 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH is a dazzling, only-by-DeMille spectacle of life behind the scenes with Ringling Bros.-Barnum and Bailey Circus, the best three-ring circus in the land. The great showman... [More]
Starring: Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Cornel Wilde, Dorothy Lamour
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Get This Movie
Reviews for The Greatest Show on Earth
Top CriticThis is the circus with more entertainment, more thrills, more spangles and as much Big Top atmosphere as RB-B&B itself can offer. It's a smash certainty for high-wire grosses.
01/28/08
Top CriticMiddling circus backstage drama.
01/24/07
It's big, it's garish, it's loud, and most of all, it's wonderful.
12/12/06
Top CriticIt won best-picture Oscar for 1952, but God (De Mille's favorite walk-on, strangely absent here) only knows why.
12/12/06
Top CriticA Soap Opera under the big top, The Greatest Show on Earth features little in the way of a plot and more in the line of a hollow spectacle.
10/31/06
Fun DeMille full of spectacle and flashy stars...and a great train wreck.
07/21/06
Characteristically elephantine Big Top epic from DeMille, thumped across with a winning brashness and garnering the veteran showman his first Best Picture Oscar.
06/24/06
One of the worst films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, Cecil B. DeMille's melodramatic circus adventure starring Jimmy Stewart and Charlton Heston inexplicably won the writing award (the called Motion Picture Story).
12/22/05
No review available.
07/17/05
Clumsy, innocent, awkward, to be sure, but it’s never skimpy on the fun.
03/04/05
The Academy Award for Best Picture has been bestowed on any number of unworthy candidates over the years, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one less deserving than The Greatest Show on Earth.
11/19/04
It's an entertaining film, but it's certainly no masterpieceand doesn't really stand up to the year's other offerings.
05/08/04
No review available.
03/17/04
A shoddy Best Picture.
11/05/03
A great big lumpen mass of a movie that won a couple of Oscars (including one for Best Picture) and is studded with stars, but ultimately collapses under the weight of the clichés it carries round with it.
05/24/03
Top CriticTwo American institutions have combined to put out a piece of entertainment that will delight movie audiences for years.
05/20/03
Top CriticHeston is a bit huffy and bombastic, the train crash is amazing (for its time), but it's just like the circus -- too much to see and not enough of any one good thing.
10/25/02
It's so deliciously retro.
10/23/02
Big, long, ultimately tedious
08/21/02
Latest News for The Greatest Show on Earth
April 07, 2008:
Charlton Heston: 1924-2008
Charlton Heston has passed away at the age of 84. More...
February 16, 2007:
Count Down Oscar History with RT's Best of the Best Pictures
We're kicking off a clear and sunny California Friday with a new feature: The Best of the Best Pictures, a convenient Tomatometer-sorted list of all 79 Best Picture Oscar... More...
Related Forums for The Greatest Show on Earth
RT On Current TV
What’s Hot On RT
Fresh Links
Featured
Appreciating Michael Jackson 
TIME music critic Josh Tyrangiel remembers - and appreciates - the high peak of Michael Jackson's career in the early '80s.
10 Best Picture Noms?
With the Best Picture Oscar noms now 10 deep, BuzzSugar looks at 10 films that should have made the cut.
Successful Sci-Fi Sequels
Sequels never used to be as good as the original, but now they can be even better. Can Transformers 2 follow suit?
Films That Time Forgot
The AV Club's Zack Handlen explores why Snowbeast has been dismissed and forgotten.
IGN RSS Feeds