The Greatest Show on Earth - Commonly referred to as the least deserving BP winner of all time, and there's certainly a case to be made for it, if only for its competition that year. More on that later. As it stands on it's own outside of history, It's a predictable slog that's sometimes pretty to look at. First of all, I didn't buy its bullshit. Fuck a bunch of the circus. I was taken to a circus once when I was 3 or 4 years old and, aside from walking in the tent and seeing some weird alien-like lady in a beige costume waiting in the wings, I have no memory of it. Maybe Molesto the Clown got a hold of me and I've blacked it out. Whatever, circuses are creepy, but for some reason people dug them before they got TV. Another problem is watching these dropouts do their acts and seeing a cut shot to the enraptured audience. It's the same problem I have with every movie I've seen about stand-up comedy. Someone tells a joke, the audience laughs uproariously, and I sit there silently holding my dick. Basically, your shit is not all that amazing. The plot sucks, too. No one cares about the battle for center ring between two trapeze artists, and it's barely a love triangle when one person doesn't seem to give a shit. A couple subplots would've been more interesting to explore, like the corrupt mob-influenced gaming on the midway or the doctor on the lam disguised as a clown. There could be an interesting movie in either of those plots, but they're barely an afterthought here. Too much time spent on the hunky trapeze guy in the Aquaman pants. That and the pageantry of the circus. We got it the first time, but they kept parading people by in new costumes, padding the film to a difficult length. Also contributing to the length is an inexplicable documentary about the roustabouts and how they load everything and set it all up. On its own, the documentary could be interesting, but here it distracts from the story. Take away all the weird gimmicks, and you have a 90 minute movie instead of one that drags on for 2 1/2 hours.
Did it deserve to win?: On it's own, this is not a god-awful movie, but it's not a very good one either. It didn't deserve the top prize in any year, much less 1952 when it beat High Noon, The Quiet Man, and the un-nominated Singin' in the Rain. There's a rumor that High Noon didn't win because no one wanted to vote for a movie written by a blacklisted screenwriter. (Thanks, Senator Joe!) John Ford won Best Director for The Quiet Man, so perhaps there was a split vote that let this movie slip in for the win. How ever it happened, this movie didn't deserve to be nominated, much less win. If it's not the least deserving winner, then it's definitely in the top 5.
(out of 5)