Review: Dumbo (2019)
Dumbo, directed by Tim Burton, tells the tale of a baby elephant with big ears and a big heart named Dumbo living in a circus run by Max Medici (Danny DeVito). One day, Dumbo learns to fly and impress everyone around the world, including the totally trustworthy entrepreneur V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) who offers the circus to work under him. Now with this new-gained ability and with the help of his caretaker Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) and his two kids (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins), Dumbo must soar to the big leagues in the hopes of reuniting with his dear mother.
This is the latest in a string of live-action remakes from Disney. I remember watching the original 1941 Dumbo as a kid and thought of it as an alright movie (I recently re-watched it again before checking out this film and I can certainly say it did not age well at all). I did not have very high expectations for this film seeing as how it’s a Tim Burton directed Disney remake. The last Disney remake Burton directed was Alice in Wonderland, which was thoroughly awful, and for his latest film it’s not much of an improvement. This new take on Dumbo brought over all of the classic moments from the original, but none of the soul. It’s not as bad as other Disney remakes, but it’s certainly not a fun movie by any means.
My biggest issue with the original Dumbo was the fact that there wasn’t really a point to the entire movie. There was no real story; the original was nothing more than a collection of scenes for kids to get distracted at. The remake adds an actual story this time around, but unfortunately it’s not very compelling. All the human characters in this film are pretty generic and are basically a collection of character tropes. You got the disenfranchised father character who tries to connect with his kids, you got the little girl who wants to change the world by being a scientist of some sort, you got the cheap but lovable business manager who tries to balance profit and family, you got the sleazy entrepreneur who treats everyone as investments, the list goes on. It doesn’t really help that the majority of the cast gives a pretty mediocre performance, with the exceptions being Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito who just ham it up whenever they can.
A lot of the moments that were memorable in the original film get soullessly recreated here. The “Casey Jr” song gets reduced to DeVito casually humming it, “Baby Mine” is recreated without any of the emotional impact from the original, the “Pink Elephants” get their own sequence and just like in the original it grinds the whole film to a halt, and “When I See An Elephant Fly” is no where to be found probably due to Disney being afraid to perform a song sung by racist caricatures in the original. Danny Elfman’s score is just average, the writing’s average, the cinematography’s average, even the CG’s kinda rubbery at points. Sure, maybe a flying baby elephant will always look unrealistic no matter how you present it, but maybe that’s why Disney had it as an animated movie in the first place.
Overall this was a bit of a drag. Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t really connect with the original in the first place that’s preventing me from liking this version, but of the new stuff that Burton introduces in his take on the story none of them really work for me. If you loved the original Dumbo or you’re just a sucker for anything Tim Burton then I guess you’ll like this film just fine, otherwise I think this is a film you can probably skip.
Final Verdict: 4/10