4.5 Stars
Disney continues its recent movie trend of live-action remakes of their animated classics with 2019's Dumbo. This is 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 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 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.
In the live-action Dumbo, Timothy Q. Mouse has a couple of quick cameos, but is not the encouraging, mentoring friend and manager as was his role in the original cartoon. Instead, it is a pair of children who discover Dumbo's talent and hone his skills.
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: his wife had passed, he lost his arm, and he was left to raise his two children with the help of his circus family. Circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) purchased an Asian elephant, Mrs. Jumbo, who was due any day with a baby that would bring a new spark to the dying, struggling circus. When her baby is born, Medici is shocked and embarrassed by the enormous size of the baby's ears. Since Holt can no longer perform horseback, the act that made him a circus star, he was charged with caring for the elephants. Medici charges Holt with fixing the baby's giant ears while he gets to work demanding a refund for the faulty elephant. Mrs. Jumbo is hauled away, but when Holt's children discover that Dumbo can fly, the are convinced that his aerial feats will draw enough crowds and make the circus enough money that they could buy Mrs. Jumbo back and reunite them. When word of the flying elephant get out, 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 and give a permanent home to the flailing traveling circus.
The animation, as it appeared from the preview, was nearly flawless. Burton and Elfman are nearly flawless, especially when they work together. And having Keaton and DeVito back together was just perfectly fantastic. There were many throwbacks to the original cartoon, but Burton definitely made this live action film his own. As I mentioned, we got to see Timothy Q. Mouse a couple times. I liked the choice in his use of the storks when it was time for the miracle of birth. It was great to hear Elfman's original yet distinctly recognizable music. Hearing his take on the classics like Casey Junior and Baby Mine (get your Kleenex ready) and Elephants on Parade. In the cartoon, Dumbo accidentally drank some of the clown's booze and blew elephant bubbles from his trunk during that song. The way Burton worked that into this movie was clever. And, I won't give it away, though I missed the crows singing When I Seen an Elephant Fly, the way he payed homage to that one was as perfect as could be done without actually having the crows back in the movie singing it.
One of the biggest challenges animators still have with CGI is when actual actors interact intimately with their CGI counterpart: walking down stairs, dancing, flying, especially when Dumbo has such an awkward flapping style of flying. The way Burton accommodated his animators by his choice of shots was genius and made for flying scenes that did not take you away from the movie at all.
I have been excited to see this movie for a long time now and I gave an enthusiastic 4.5 Star Prediction to Dumbo. I am sticking with my 4.5 Star Rating and the only reason really that it wasn't a perfect 5 stars was because of Holt's daughter who played such a major role in the film but lacked any kind of emotional range throughout 95% of the movie. I don't know if it was her acting choices or a director's guidance, but she had the same lack of emotion when Holt came home without an arm, when her dad was dismissive of her desires to leave the circus, when Dumbo began to fly, when Dumbo was separated from his mom, when their small circus was bought by V. A. Vandevere. No facial expressions, no emotion in her voice or eyes. It was just flat. But, other than that, I thought it was 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, what movie will be on my mind next? We shall see.
