Again, I liked the movie, but I think these excerpts from an essay on Theodor Adorno (who I had never heard of until very recently) summarize one of my issues with Greatest Showman — I have trouble thinking of another movie that more relies on viewers to check off milestones of character development and plot points and to fill in gaps left by the film, which feels like it's skipping along the surface of its own story:

It also accustoms us to a kind of aesthetic experience that is very similar to the work it is meant to release us from; a constant checking of the artwork against pre-set standards and tropes. Consider how rare it is when watching a popular film, for example, not to be aware of the function of the scene – one scene is clearly establishing relationships that will frame the events to come, another is an action scene, another gives the villain’s motivation. We are usually equipped with a subconscious understanding of the function of every scene, and indeed its expected length. When the opening scene of a film shows someone waking up in a messy bedroom, we are reasonably sure that this is our main character, and that when the alarm rings that character will wake up worried about being late for something. When James Bond visits Q, we know that the gadgets are being shown because they will be used later, so we remember them; we know the discussion will not take long, and that no deep emotional conversations will occur. And our expectations are rarely disappointed. We are put to work in organising, checking and filing the moments of the film as it passes by. Instead of being given time for consideration and interpretation, we are engaged in the very sort of classification and sorting that characterises the world of work we thought we were escaping from.

. . .

No space is left for consumers to exhibit ‘imagination and spontaneity’ – rather, they are swept along in a succession of predictable moments, each of which is so easy to digest that they can be ‘alertly consumed even in a state of distraction’. And if, as Adorno believes, in the wider world we are under ever-increasing pressure to conform, to produce, and to pour our energies into our work, this loss of a place where we can think freely, imagine, and consider new possibilities is a deep and harmful loss. Even in our freedom from work, we are not free to truly take the kind of free and spontaneous pleasure that might help us recognise and reject the harmful lack of pleasure we find in our working lives.

https://aeon.co/essays/against-guilty-pleasures-adorno-on-the-crimes-of-pop-culture