Dumbo Review

The Disney train keep chugging along as the first of their now four major live-action remakes has now hit theaters with "Dumbo." I initially went into this year calling this the big three with "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all hitting theaters in 2019, but now we have a fourth because "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" got moved up to October 2019 after initially being scheduled for May 29, 2020. I guess Disney didn't like the idea of that being sandwiched directly between "Fast & Furious 9" and "Wonder Woman 1984," so they decided they were ahead of schedule enough to put it into a less crowded October. Smart move, I suppose. But anyways, there's a lot of pressure on these four movies to perform for Disney. If these movies fail, then it'll be time for Disney to rethink this trend of redoing all of their previous material. If they succeed, we might be seeing these movies for the rest of time. I have reservations on all the other three, but thanks to a strong advertising campaign I had reason to believe that "Dumbo" was primed to succeed despite me initially questioning how they were going to turn a movie as short as "Dumbo" into a feature-length film. But man, we're not off to a good start here because I am beyond stunned to reveal that "Dumbo" is a piece of trash.

Regarding the history of "Dumbo," the original animated film came out in 1941. It was Disney's fourth animated film and was coming off the two financial disappointments in "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia." Yeah, those two would obviously recover later, especially once Disney learned that they could keep re-releasing their movies in theaters until buying movies on VHS actually became a thing, which wasn't really until the 80's. But yeah, it's interesting to note that those two movies actually failed financially upon their initial release, thanks mostly to War War II. That was probably a heavy contributor to "Dumbo" being a much more simple movie made on a smaller budget with the intention of helping Disney actually make money. No, I'm not a Disney scholar, so if I missed anything there, feel free to contribute to that. The overall point is that "Dumbo" is one of Disney's shortest feature-length films, coming in at just 64 minutes long. And part of that run time comes with a lot of fluff that includes Dumbo getting drunk and dreaming about pink elephants, followed by a sequence involving some racist crows. Yeah, not all of it holds up in 2019, but it's still a charming little story about an elephant who feels lost and misplaced, but eventually learns to find his way.

Before Disney's advertising conned me into thinking this would be a great film, I did have some major concerns regarding this live-action adaptation. No, it had nothing to do with Tim Burton being the director. I think the man gets an unfair poor reputation. Yeah, he's a bit weird, but he made a lot of classic films in the 80's and 90's. Even though he has some harsh blunders like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Dark Shadows" this decade, it's not all been bad this decade. I didn't hear awful things about "Miss Peregrine," although I never bothered to see it. Also, "Frankenweenie" has plenty of fans, even though I myself was mostly bored with, but most importantly "Big Eyes" came out in 2014 and that movie is phenomenal. So I had hope that Tim Burton could do a fine job with "Dumbo" if he cared enough about the project. My concerns were more in line with the question of what in the frack are they going to do with "Dumbo" to fill space? As I said, the original animated movie is barely over an hour and even then Disney had a hard time filling space in the movie. But yet you're telling me that they're remaking "Dumbo" and turning into a two hour film? Because, yeah, the run time here is 112 minutes, eight minutes short of two hours. That's rather incredible for such a simple idea.

The answer to that question is rather appalling and is the reason it's so bad. Everyone should know the premise of the animated "Dumbo," but if you don't, I'm about to spoil a 78-year-old movie. Everyone at the circus makes fun of Dumbo for his giant ears. That causes his mother to lose her temper and go crazy, causing them to deem her as mad and toss her into a cage. Bad goes from worse when Dumbo's circus act goes horribly wrong after he trips on his ears. But little Timothy Q. Mouse becomes his friend, or his Jiminy Cricket if you will, helps him gain his confidence back and essentially teaches him to use his ears to fly. The movie ends with Dumbo back at the circus where he jumps off a tall platform and flies around the circus, becoming an immediate sensation. All of that exists in the movie, minus the Timothy Q. Mouse stuff as they go for a more realistic approach where animals don't talk. The role of Timothy Q. Mouse is instead played by the two young kids. No, Dumbo doesn't get drunk, although there's a pink elephant ode later in the film, and there's no racist crows. But what really surprised me is that all of that is crammed into the first 20 minutes of the film. Dumbo becomes a beloved sensation before we even get to the second act.

Granted, if we're going to keep remaking these Disney films, it's much better to go the route of "The Jungle Book" or "Pete's Dragon" where the filmmakers take slightly flawed source material and do something much different to improve it. Disney's original version of "The Jungle Book" is fun and nostalgic, but it's far from perfect and that original "Pete's Dragon" movie is quite strange. In both of these instances with the live-action remakes, I think the remakes ended up being better, which impressed. Yes, I did really enjoy the live-action "Beauty and the Beast," but in hindsight I will admit that making a mostly carbon copy of it means I'll probably never return and watch it when I'm in the mood for "Beauty and the Beast." I'll turn to the animated movie instead. That's why I'm also concerned about the upcoming "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" remakes because how in the world are they going to manage to top the original source materials there? I don't think that's possible. But "Dumbo" had potential because there's room for improvement. So I commend them for going in a completely new direction. It's just that the new direction that they took was so alarmingly bad that I became increasingly baffled at the long string of poor creative decisions that kept coming.

These decisions are so bad that Dumbo essentially becomes sidelined as a supporting character in his own movie. The movie is instead about a father, played by Colin Farrell, and his two kids. He's recently returned from war, World War I, I think. He's lost his arm, though, and his wife has passed away. So the three of them are having a really rough time. Thus there's room for growth and progression there. But they become increasingly uninteresting as the movie goes along, mostly because Colin Farrell doesn't seem to care about this role or this film. The little boy tried his hardest in the movie, but he doesn't get a ton of screen time. Instead a ton of the focus is on this little girl, and, well, bless her heart, but she is terrible in this movie. It's one of the worst child actor performances that I can remember. And I don't blame Nico Parker, the young actress here, for this. I'm putting all of the blame on Tim Burton for being incapable of directing children. There's only so much you can do as a kid when the director doesn't know how to help you out, which is a common critique of Tim Burton. Not helping things out is the introduction of Eva Green, who I think was supposed to act as a new love interest for Colin Farrell, but there is zero chemistry there.

Maybe on paper this sounded like a decent idea, but there's no life here in any of the performances with this family. No one cared and thus I was quickly bored of them. I also became increasingly angry seeing Dumbo, who was cute and adorable in this movie, continuing to be sidelined in favor of this family. But less you think I'm going to put all the blame on the Tim Burton here, while giving the writing a pass for trying to write a decent family drama, the main plot in this movie is an absolute train wreck. This involves Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton. First off, Danny DeVito is the ring leader of the original traveling circus that includes Dumbo, Collin Farrell's family and a whole bunch of misfits. After they discover the flying Dumbo, their little circus gets a ton of attention from people around the country, with one of those individuals being Michael Keaton's character. He's some sort of higher up dude who decides to hire DeVito as is partner in this mega circus thing so that Keaton can take care advantage of this flying elephant phenomenon. This is where Eva Green also comes in as Keaton's sidekick. Or, rather, the pretty girl who Keaton is taking advantage. Because, yeah, Keaton is the nefarious villain of the movie even though he's not convincing.

So that's your actual setup. Boring family drama and this circus shenanigans with Keaton and DeVito. From there it seems like they were just making things up as they went because all sorts of weird stuff happens from that point on. None of it feels connected. There's no pretty story arc. Any character development is forced. Things of course go horribly wrong at the circus. There's some sort of Nightmare Island thing with a heist or a rescue mission of sorts and a whole bunch of other nonsense that was even hard to follow. So many characters. So many story lines. No heart. No soul. No logic. No sense. This became a difficult watch where I was cringing at times and loudly laughing out loud at scenes that weren't supposed to be funny. There's one point where Alan Arkin shows up in the film and as Keaton's circus is getting destroyed by a fire, he looks at the flames, then turns to the camera and states, "This is a disaster!" I flat out lost it at that point. I think I was laughing for five minutes because that moment ironically described the whole film. So who's to blame for all of this? Well, I'm looking at the top to Disney executives for thinking this was a good idea in the first place. Then I'm staring right at director Tim Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger.

In researching whose idea this was, Wikipedia informs me that production on this began in 2014 when Ehren Kruger wrote a script for the film and gave it to Derek Frey, who is the head of Tim Burton Productions. Frey was apparently touched and green-lit the film, which was officially announced by Disney as being in production in summer 2014. Tim Burton was officially announced as director in March 2015. So it looks like Ehren Kruger is our initial culprit here. Looking at his filmography as a screenwriter, he is the writer responsible for the second, third and fourth "Transformers" films. And suddenly everything makes sense. But even if it was his idea, that screenplay passed through a lot of hands and I'm rather shocked that said people took a look at it and thought it was a good idea, so all of them get blame, too. And finally, I think Disney trusted Tim Burton because he created a $1 billion film for them via "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010, but it feels like he took the job as "Dumbo" director so that he could get a nice paycheck from Disney and use that for whatever his next personal project is. So yeah, combine an awful screenplay with an uninterested director a a studio thinking with their bank account and the result is "Dumbo."

I wanted to like this. I really did. I saw the slightly mixed critical reaction, but wasn't worried because a score that was hovering around 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes means that about half of the critics gave this a pass (the dust has settled at 48 percent right now). I heard decent things from some other YouTube critics that I listened to that I was convinced that this was going to be just fine. Sure, I wasn't expecting this to be as great as "The Jungle Book" or "Pete's Dragon," but I was hoping for an experience like "Christopher Robin," which was a solidly charming nostalgic film. My idea was that some critics were being a little to Grinchy, which often happens for movies aimed at family audiences. But yeah, I was shocked. That 48 percent actually seems super generous as I'm now thinking of this as a strong contender for the worst live-action adaptation that Disney has done. That award might go to "Alice Through the Looking Glass" for me, but I think "Dumbo" is right after it, with "Alice in Wonderland" and "Maleficent" not too far behind. Now there's enough good from "Dumbo" with the production design and other technical aspects of the film that convince me to not go super low with my grade, but I'm certainly not positive here as I'm giving "Dumbo" a 5/10.