Disney is continuing its recent movie trend of live-action remakes of their animated classics with 2019's Dumbo. This will be Disney's 11th live-action remake following hits like Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, Jungle Book, and Christopher Robin, though Christopher Robin was actually a live-action continuance rather than a remake. And they won't be slowing down any time soon with previews already leaked out for Aladdin, The Lion King and Little Mermaid. And each one of these live-action movies gets more and more realistic and close to a perfectly imperceptible blend of CGI and actual actors and animals.
After a long string of weird, wonderful, fantastic and bizarrely beautifully haunting movies, Director Tim Burton has been somewhat quiet in the last several years. He directed Big Eyes in 2014 and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children in 2016 and produced Alice Through the Looking Glass in 2016, but this is the one Burton fans and Disney fans alike have been anticipating for years now since it was first announced he would be taking on the project.
To add to the cornucopia of delicious movie making ingredients, Burton has reunited with stars Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito for the first time since he directed them both in Batman Returns in 1992.
Dumbo is the story of an baby elephant born into the circus with comically large ears. He is unwelcome by the other elephants. During a parade in town, a group of boys tease Dumbo incessantly to the point that his mother must defend him. For her protective instincts, she is locked away as a dangerous elephant. Dumbo is alone save for his only friend Timothy Q. Mouse who is determined to look after the pachyderm. Timothy is able to convince the circus ringmaster to let Dumbo be the top of the elephant pyramid, but he trips over his own ears causing harm to the other elephants.
The next morning, Timothy and Dumbo wake up in a tree. A group of crows convinces them that Dumbo flew up there. Back at the circus, Dumbo's newest trick is to jump from a burning building to be caught by clown firemen as he plummets into a tub of water. With the aide of a black crow feather and the encouraging words of Timothy, Dumbo flies through the circus instead of plunging into the water. Dumbo becomes an overnight sensation and the star of the show. He and his mother are reunited and given a private luxury car on the circus train with Timothy as his manager.
In the live-action preview, we get a peek at a character who looks to be Timothy Q. Mouse, but it's pretty clear from the peek that he will not be performing the same role he did in the original cartoon. Instead, it is a pair of children who discover Dumbo in a pile of hay. While there are allusions to similarities to the original film, it is also clear that this will be a very different version of Dumbo. One thing is for sure, though: the scene that made everyone cry in the cartoon will be there in the live action as Dumbo and his mother share a tender moment outside of her prison cell. The famous song from the cartoon is Baby Mine. The preview has a hauntingly beautiful version playing as only Burton's best music buddy Danny Elfman could compose.
In this version, Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) was a big circus star until he went off to fight in the war. He did not return the same man. Circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) enlists Holt's assistance in watching after Dumbo, the newborn elephant with giant ears who is the laughing stock of the struggling circus. When Holt's children discover that Dumbo can fly, entrepreneur V. A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) and circus aerial acrobat Colette Marchant (Eva Green) show up to make the big-eared wonder a super star.
The animation looks nearly flawless. Burton and Elfman are nearly flawless, especially when they work together. And having Keaton and DeVito back together is just perfectly fantastic waiting to happen. I've been excited to see this movie for a long time now and I'm giving an enthusiastic 4.5 Star Prediction to Dumbo. I think it will be well worth the money in the theatre, one I'll want to see again and again and will definitely add to my collection as soon as I can. So, am I right? We shall see.
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