Dumbo Review

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.

Dumbo 2019 Preview

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.  

Saving Mr. Banks Review

5.0 Stars

Saving Mr. Banks from Walt Disney Pictures is the story of how Australian born author Pamela Lyndon "P. L." Travers (Emma Thompson) reluctantly agreed to allow Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) turn her best selling stories into a Hollywood movie.  We are all familiar with the popular Disney movie entitled Mary Poppins released in 1964, but the film was based on a series of books written by Travers in the 1930's in London.  Despite her less than modest upbringings, Travers found quite a bit of success from her books.  This film takes place at an important crossroads: Walt Disney has expressed interest in turning her books into a full length feature film right at the same time her funds from the book sales (which isn't selling any more) are completely gone.  Travers is in danger of losing her house and has no money left which is the only reason she agrees to even consider allowing her stories to be made into a movie.

The first rule in writing is simply to write.  The second rule, often debated as being the first, is that there are no rules.  That rule is usually followed with a series of "guidelines" for an aspiring author.  But the best, yet often most misinterpreted rule, is to write what you know.  Pamela Travers (born Helen Goff and later changed her name after her father Travers Goff, played by Colin Farrell) never had a nanny fly in from the clouds with a talking parrot umbrella.  But, in 1906, that's what it felt like to a little girl who was losing her father, her hero, when her aunt came to their shack of a house to care for them.  By the same token, Walt Disney never knew a talking mouse.  But, as a boy of 8 when his father made him and his older brother Roy walk morning and night in the snow delivering papers for his father's company else they felt the scorn of the buckle on his belt, that mouse was a good and dear friend to young Walt.  These were escapes, these were creations that stemmed from emotions that came to life either through written word, through drawings, or through movies that stirred common emotions in their audiences.  

A creator's greatest fear is not being criticized or told their creation is no good.  A true creator is not looking for praise, but a shared experience.  Criticism is actually good because it means people are talking about what you wrote or made.  No, a creator's greatest fears are that they will have no one to share their creation with, no audience to laugh or cry or think or become enraged or frightened.  A creator is also afraid that their work might be altered, corrupted, misrepresented and no longer true.  And that was Travers' biggest fear.  She didn't want Disney taking her family, her memories, her emotions and turning them into one of his cartoons.  Confused, Walt comments that she is talking about a "flying nanny with a talking umbrella" sent to save the children.  Her worst fears are realized when she rebuts saying, "You think Mary Poppins came to save the children?"

Saving Mr. Banks is the story of two stubborn, nearly immovable forces posing as two people looking to find a common ground.  Despite their best efforts, they actually do.  It takes Walt a while to understand the personal attachment Travers has to the books and their characters.  When it hits him, he realizes how close to home her stories really are.  It's then he is able to convince her that this story needs to be told and that he is the perfect one to tell it.  If you can set aside that this isn't a completely historical document, but rather based on the true events that transpired, if you have ever written or drawn or created or sang or built anything that came from your heart, this movie will entertain you and delight you and touch you as it did me. 

And perhaps that's why I gave this a perfect 5 star rating.  I cannot wait to own this movie.  As a writer, I also feel the sadness that my creations may never be shared with the world.  I also fear that if my creations do take flight, someday they may be twisted and bastardized to lose their true feeling that prompted their inception.  There are several touching scenes in the movie.  The limousine driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti) has a wonderful scene with Travers on the lawn outside the Disney Studios.  The scene in which the musical geniuses the Sherman brothers (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman) finally propose a song that meets Travers' approval will almost have you applauding.  But for me, the scene that made me tear up the most, was the escort Travers received into the theatre at the premiere of Mary Poppins.  She was misunderstood to be a cold and unfeeling woman and that couldn't be further from the truth.  She had no family that would notice she was gone, no true friends (even envied those who gathered in the bar in the lobby of her Beverly Hills Hotel), and barely any human contact outside of her publisher and her maid.  Yet she spoke of emotions and life experiences that touched so many.  Though they didn't know the story, they knew the feelings.  And once Walt identified with those feelings, he knew he could tell the story.

I highly recommend this movie.  I'm sure this movie won't get the highest marks from everyone who watches it, but it moved me in such a way that I wouldn't feel right giving it any other rating.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.