Movie Review: Tim Burton’s "Dumbo" Keeps It Simple, Stupid

There’s not much here, but who needs more? Tim Burton’s remaking of Dumbo doesn’t overthink it.

When Disney and Tim Burton got together in 2010 for an Alice in Wonderland revamp that no one seemed to particularly like, it grossed a billion dollars anyway.

It’s shocking to think they’d wait a decade to collaborate on another live-action remake. I guess this latest opportunity, Dumbo, was just a no-brainer.

Encouraged by the CGI that allowed man and animal to co-mingle in Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book, Disney is now turning all their classic cartoon films into "live-action" flicks, and Icarus-style, they’re flying closest to the sun with this story of an airborne elephant. The original Dumbo, released in 1941, barely runs for an hour and focuses exclusively on the plight of an elephant born with ears so big they can literally keep him afloat in the sky. (It still found time for a bunch of problematic material too, like racist crows and hallucinatory intoxication; both are scrubbed from this reimagining.)

So, how do you flesh that out into a two-hour feature? Director Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger find a good enough answer: keep it simple, stupid.

Sure, there are more humans in this telling, like Danny DeVito as circus ringmaster Max Medici, and Colin Farrell’s Holt Farrier, a one-armed war veteran saddled with training Max’s animal hordes circa 1940. Primarily though, this is the story of Dumbo, the big-eared baby of Medici’s prized elephant Mrs. Jumbo. When mother and son—I assume Dumbo’s a boy; umm, I didn’t look to check—are separated, the heartbroken Dumbo makes an unspoken bargain to fly for Medici’s circus, so they can afford to buy back Mrs. Jumbo. The miracle show is a hit, and the circus is eventually absorbed by Michael Keaton’s outlandish entrepreneur character V.A. Vandevere, a man with 1,000 accents (that may not have been an intentional choice). You may or may not be shocked to learn Vandevere’s real intentions don’t involve any future elephant reunions.

Unless you’re a very small child, you may not find any of this remotely scintillating. That is, except for whenever Dumbo’s in the air; a thrilling diversion from the standard family fare on show. Eva Green plays Colette, a trapeze artist given the perilous task of riding Dumbo in their big top show, adding a compelling wrinkle to the story. She’s great, and so is the beautifully animated soaring pachyderm.

It’s also admirable how Burton continues what he started in Frankenweenie by giving us a tweenage hero with a passion for science and curiosity. Here, it’s the widower Holt’s daughter Milly (Nico Parker, progeny and dead ringer of Thandie Newton). She and her on-screen brother Joe (Finley Hobbins) run Dumbo’s flight drills with professional precision. They are not too precocious, or even troubled by the day-to-day dramas that come with being a broke carny in a go-nowhere circus. Respect.

Dumbo is otherwise a gentle, amiable, unmemorable softening of Burton’s typical visual motifs, presumably to limit the nightmare fuel being poured directly into young viewers’ own ears. Danny Elfman provides a reliable funhouse score, and it's nice to see a collection of Burton’s repertory players (DeVito, Keaton and Green) in a new configuration. However, the biggest doff of the cap should go to the animators, who give the computer-generated title animal the most sympathetic eyes you’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, Dumbo is so cute, you never really get why audiences initially mock him, pulling their ears in derision. It’s a bloody cute baby elephant with big floppy ears. Why is everyone freaking out?

3/5

In Australian cinemas 28 March. Rated PG for mild themes, some scenes may scare young children.

Header Image: Disney