So the latest Disney live-action remake of a classic animated flick is at theaters. Tim Burton’s version of Dumbo… and that sentence contains two triggers for me. I do not like the original animated Dumbo movie. As a kid, I thought it was deeply boring and, as an adult, I’m shocked (shocked!) to find out it was only a little over an hour (it seemed to go on forever, especially the pink elephants). As far as Tim Burton goes, he’s been up but mostly down for the past fifteen to twenty years. I keep hoping I’ll love his movies; he keeps failing me. How is he on Dumbo? Better than usual, I suppose.
So Dumbo is a live action remake and that’s a pretty apt description. This Dumbo film is more about the human characters and all the animals are just that… animals. No talking mice, no storks delivering babies, no chatty elephants, and no drunken babies seeing pink elephants. It makes oblique references to the ringmaster mouse, the delivery storks, and there are less-intoxicant-related pink elephants but these are just winks to the audience.
In fact, given that it takes about an hour for Dumbo to fly in an one hour long cartoon, Dumbo now takes to the air in the first 30 minutes of a two hour film. Which means everything that happens after that makes this almost more of a sequel to Dumbo than a remake. The new story, unfortunately, is kind of a by-the-books, connect-the-dots family drama involving the circus being bought up by a greedy tycoon and how the performers and animals have to escape his clutches. Amusingly, it also seems to take a swipe at Walt Disney theme parks so that’s fun. Weird, but fun.
It stars Colin Farrel as a wounded, one-armed soldier returning to the circus after fighting in WW1. The circus is not doing great, partially due to a half dozen performers dying from the Spanish Flu… including Farrel’s wife and mother of his two children. So… yeah… we start this movie with tons o’ fun!
To be fair, the movie isn’t relentlessly grim. It has a certain heart and visual style that, while dark, also has a kind of fantasy life to it. It looks like the film is 90% CGI locations with 90% CGI animals, but it still manages to look good in a dream-like fairy tale 1919 sort of way. I doubt there were any actual elephants in the flick but the fake ones looked pretty amazing.
The rest of the human cast is pretty interesting. Danny DeVito as the original circus owner is really good… not exactly playing the usual Danny DeVito character. On the other hand, Michael Keaton plays the villain but not in a good-Keaton or bad-guy-Keaton way. He seemed out-of-sorts or playing the wrong tone or something. Eva Green plays a trapeze artist who needs to ride Dumbo as he flies and she’s really good. Two kid actors are here as well… but they are kind of bland, especially the girl who is playing a typical Burton disaffected, distant kind of character.
In the long run, I was kind of annoyed by this movie but I can’t exactly pin down why. Maybe it’s my disinterest in the original source material… but I feel like this is different (and better) so I don’t think that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the routine story or not being a super fan of Dumbo the animal (being the monster I am). I’m not sure. I wasn’t exactly bored but I was impatient. It did have some moving moments but I think maybe they were too mechanical or the (human) actors were being directed to be vaguely inhuman or “off”.
I’m ultimately very mixed on this movie. I’m fairly sure most people will have a good time and go along with the emotional pull. I found it distressingly disengaging. Maybe a little too artificial.
Score: 72