Rating: 
Summary: circus gold
Review: i have to agree with my fellow reviewer's comments.....it is a shame that jimmy stewart was in clown face all the way through the film, but, i read once he wanted to be in the background on this film....heston wasn't at his best either.....maybe he didn't know how to play a common work a day human being...after being in the role of all those Bibical figures.....he tries to come off the "Mountain", but his acting is flat as the leader of this circus...he is tough toward all his co stars,and mean spirited.....he goes through the whole movie being angry at someone...it is a great movie to see the cameos of the stars we've lost...betty hutton and her female costars pull off the movie in grand style...this movie is a good one to watch on a rainy afternoon....when a circus is just what you need....the story is scattered about..........but you slowly get rid of the sawdust.somewhere there is a jewel of a movie...
Rating: 
Summary: The greatest show on earth
Review: I love this movie, my 2 year grandson and I watch it daily with a big bucket of popcorn. I am a professional clown and saw the movie for the first time while attending clown school. In fact one of the stunt doubles for cornell wilde was providing behind the scenes info, which made the movie even more fun! A must have for all circus fans.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great movie that keeps you coming back for more.
Review: I love this movie. The cast is loaded with great actors. This movies has everything you want in a movie: action, suspense, comedy, mystery, and romance. This is a film that I would recommend for all young people to watch at least once.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good.
Review: I loved this movie. Look for two of Dorothy Lamour's "friends" in the stands in the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: America: Circa 1952
Review: I've always enjoyed this movie. Having been born in 1952, the year it was made, I consider it to be a good snapshot of the era. It's purpose was simple: To just be very entertaining. All the Cecil B. DeMille cliches are there in spades, including the unbelievable dialog between all the players. Once you get past that, the circus acts themselves hold up wonderfully. The actors were obviously coached enough to make the performances believable. The generous use of actual circus performers is gratifying. Did it deserve the Best Picture Award for 1952? Not if you like "true-to-life" drama or message films. But for capturing the general feeling and attitudes of the time, it probably did.
Rating:
Summary: My wife's favorite movie.
Review: It really made my wife happy when I finally found this on video. As far as circus movies go, this one is the best of the few. I finally started liking it after the 10 time my wife watched it.
Rating:
Summary: Aeesome in its Badness
Review: Jaw droppingly bad movie. Loud, dumb, melodramtic, cheesy and poorly acted. Widely hailed as purhaps the worst movie to win the academy award for best picture. A Cecil B Demille vanity project. High Noon and The Quiet Man are infinitely superior movies. That High Noon didn't win is a crime. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly should have sued somebody, anybody.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Unintentionally Hilarious Show on Earth
Review: Make no mistake, TGSOE is strictly a one-star wonder. But it's so entertainingly bad that it never fails to mesmerize me. There are much, much, much better films (like Glitter and Battlefield Earth) that I can't sit through even once.Where else can you find the one truly awful Charlton Heston performance (his interpretation of machismo is to wear a tough hat and pout like a 12-year-old)? Where else can you find dialogue that would make soap stars demand a rewrite? Where else can you find a train wreck that looked impressive in the 1950s but today appears to be someone slamming a bunch of cereal boxes against each other end to end? Where else can one of the five or six greatest film actors waste his efforts behind clown makeup and with a backstory straight out of -- well, those soaps that need rewriting? And where else can minutes upon minutes of screen time be taken up with circus footage that has nothing whatever to do with the plot (which probably makes these scenes the best in the movie)? I mean, Berserk (1968) was a better circus movie! Oh, and let's not forget DeMille's own narration, in which circus folks attain a kind of nobility not seen since the noble folks in -- well, any other DeMille movie! By all means, see this movie at least once. But I warn you, if you rent it somewhere, you'll end up buying -- it's the best bad movie of them all!
Rating:
Summary: Best? Great? Whatever ... It's Marvelous Entertainment!
Review: Movie: **** DVD Quality: ***** DVD Extras: N/A
It almost seems that "The Greatest Show on Earth" would be more highly respected today if it had not won the Best Picture Oscar in 1952; reviewers often tend to compare its value to that of other films released the same year (especially "The Quiet Man", which won Best Director for John Ford and "Singin' in the Rain" which failed to secure a Best Picture nomination at all), and find TGSOE lacking. Such criticism is patently unfair. After all, whether it won as a fluke because the other nominees split the vote, or whether the Academy voters simply went for it in a big way, it isn't TGSOE's fault that it emerged the big winner - blame the Academy! And Oscar considerations aside, it's undeniable that TGSOE is exactly what its producers and director Cecil B. DeMille intended it to be: a great big, gaudy, colorful, lavish example of traditional storytelling and old-fashioned entertainment that would delight and thrill audiences while raking in piles of money at the box-office. On those terms, the film was - and still is - a stupendous success.
Certainly the movie features the cast of a lifetime interacting with actual circus personnel in this early "Circus of the Stars". In addition to top-billed Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde (who actually performed many of their own acrobatic stunts), the players include Charlton Heston; Gloria Grahame; Dorothy Lamour; legendary clown Emmett Kelly; DeMille regulars Henry Wilcoxon and Julia Faye; Lyle Bettger; Lawrence Tierney; and, in a meaty supporting role, James Stewart. Countless big names also make cameo appearances or pop up in crowd scenes: watch for Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the stands while "Road" series co-star Dorothy Lamour is singing; Edmond O'Brien; Hopalong Cassidy; and many more. The slim plot, concerning the behind-the-scenes operations of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, is secondary to the spectacle of the performers, animals, and roustabouts, but DeMille nonetheless throws in some torrid romance, a dash of mystery, a touch of tragedy ... and a mammoth train wreck! And all this was filmed in eye-popping three-strip Technicolor, making it a visual feast for the eyes.
The Paramount DVD offers a gorgeous film-to-video transfer that is wonderful to behold. The film is presented in its original "full-screen" aspect ratio (the widescreen CinemaScope process wouldn't make its debut for another year), and looks and sounds terrific. Highly recommended to those who enjoy star-filled extravaganzas and "old-fashioned" epic storytelling; anyone who ever dreamed of running away from home and joining the circus (and didn't most of us?) will especially enjoy this rousing entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: What's with this transfer?
Review: Okay, you like the movie or you don't. I do. Corny but a great spectacle,etc. But what's with this transfer? It is full screen, not letterboxed, and some scenes snap inexplicably in and out of close-up mode -- not pan and scan but hop and jump. Damn shame, given the wait for this one.
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