N. B.

I took my boys age 5 and 11 to it in IMAX. They both enjoyed the film. They have a main character who has lost an arm. I am glad they are including (well, actually portraying) people with these differences in films now but I wish they would find a person who is actually with this disability to represent these roles, instead of creating the deforming effect. Same thing with the movie "Wonder" when they made the kid to look like he had the disorder he portrayed with the facial deformities. Think about it. It reminds me of when white actors wore blackface to portray black people in the past. I am willing to bet in the past the justification for this practice was that there wasn't talented black actors. Nowadays, these studios could put forth more effort to find people and train them for these specific roles that have the actual deformities but they don't. Imagine a little boy who is missing an arm watching this movie, and thinking, "wow, I could be an actor cuz look at him! He's just like me!" and then looking up the actor to find he actually isn't missing an arm. What message does that send? Spoiler: in the end of the movie the elephants are set free and the circus becomes animal free. I'm a lover of the circus and I do not believe that having animals in the circus is wrong. I eat meat every day and I bet most people do. I think those circus animals are treated much better than the animals that are raised to become hamburgers. Where's the mass outrage for that? Not much. And I don't think you can say that an elephants life is any more valuable than that of a chicken or a hog or a cow. In my opinion, the only one's who can really say that animals should not be in the circus are vegans. Which is not that many people. Like it or not, the circus needs animals to survive. The movie was good. Not fantastic, but worth your time if you are looking for something to do with the kids.

My ten year old son says, “I really liked it but you probably won’t like it if you don’t know the lore.”