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.
Comment
05/24/03
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
41
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:9
Rotten:13
Average Rating:5.3/10
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
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Reviews for The Greatest Show on Earth
It won best-picture Oscar for 1952, but God (De Mille's favorite walk-on, strangely absent here) only knows why.
12/12/06
Nem sempre um filme deve ser cegamente alardeado como 'clássico' - mesmo que tenha recebido o Oscar e contado com a direção de um dos maiores cineastas da História.
05/31/02
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
Fun DeMille full of spectacle and flashy stars...and a great train wreck.
07/21/06
Clumsy, innocent, awkward, to be sure, but it’s never skimpy on the fun.
03/04/05
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.
03/17/04
It's so deliciously retro.
10/23/02
Big, long, ultimately tedious
08/21/02
Two American institutions have combined to put out a piece of entertainment that will delight movie audiences for years.
05/20/03
No review available.
07/26/02
A 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
Middling circus backstage drama.
01/24/07
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
A shoddy Best Picture.
11/05/03
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.
02/18/09
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
It's big, it's garish, it's loud, and most of all, it's wonderful.
12/12/06
Bloated, hopelessly creaky spectacle that's as boring now as it was irrelevant in 1952.
08/04/02
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...
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