Should've just stayed in and watched "The Greatest Showman."
After spending so long defending the potential of live action Disney remakes, I can’t deny that coming across the absolute nadir of the concept’s merit is a particularly satisfying experience.
Yet, that is exactly what “Dumbo” manages to be for the
entire concept of these live action remakes.
Fittingly directed by Tim Burton, whose “Through the Looking
Glass” styled remake of Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland” kicked off the entire
concept over 9 years ago, the movie does, to its credit, opt to forgo the
lazier and more cynical approach of retelling the narrative of its 1941
animated original source material beat for beat.
Using the conventional tools of live action to convey its
story, “Dumbo” shifts the focus away from the titular abnormal flying elephant
in favor of the circus community that raised him and the trials and
tribulations they undergo struggling to turn a profit in a tumultuous entertainment
industry.
Specifically a recently widowed stunt horse rider returned
from military service, played by Colin Farrell, and his two children, alongside
a shrewd but loveable ringmaster, played by Danny DeVito, try to find and
manage an act for him to make him feel at home with the sale of his mother
having recently finalized.
The nicest thing I can really say about “Dumbo” is that it
didn’t fail to take the benefits of its chosen and forsaken mediums for
granted. The original movie is a quaint, charming, and emotional, fable of a
movie that fully embraced the medium of animation as a tool to characterize a
cast of predominantly nonhuman characters who served as the central focus of
the story.
Translating it directly to live action wasn’t going to
replicate even a fraction of the charm in that original story and this
adaptation fortunately doesn’t even try to, instead aiming to put its own spin
on the premise by telling its own unique interpretation of the story buoyed by
impressive performances by DeVito, Farrell, Eva Green, and an undeniably
gorgeous art direction instilling a sense of whimsy and imagination in ways Tim
Burton can probably put together in his sleep.
Unfortunately, that’s about where the good ends.
Despite no longer being the focus of his own movie, Dumbo
himself is still an absolutely adorable creature at the center of what heart
this film has to give. By virtue of this movie’s approach however, driven by
the human drama, he isn’t effectively utilized enough.
Scenes such as his emotional goodbye to his mother and
learning to fly are a drop in the bucket compared to the focus paced on the new
subjects of this film’s chosen creative direction and that is sadly where “Dumbo”
completely falls apart.
Everything involving the human cast of “Dumbo” is a
hodgepodge of circus movie, kid and their animal, show business drama, coming
of age, period piece clichés long past their prime and executed in a capacity
that’s either so bland its outright dull, borderline infuriating in how
obviously it missed an opportunity to do more and be more if it put in the
slightest bit of effort, or just laughably terrible.
The notion of extensively using a circus setting would be to
presumably push the theme of found family that could provide the ostracized
young Dumbo comfort but this never really factors into anything that happens in
the movie; Dumbo may be a catalyst for things that happen to them but it never
directly relates back to him or his desire to reunite with his mother, instead
playing second fiddle to two child actors, one of which feels aimless and the
other distractingly dead and wooden in her line delivery.
Such is true when at the film’s disposal is a one armed war
veteran and his motherless children, whom live in a traveling circus. The laziness
on display in failing to correlate any of these threads efficiently is
staggering.
Poor Michael Keaton comes out of the entire endeavor worse
for wear than the rest of the cast, feeling almost like a caricature of diabolical
Tim Burton mastermind that feels jaw droppingly out of place in a world that’s
already heavily stylized.
This disconnected cluster of narrative junk plods along
until a formulaic uncharacteristically action packed third act climax hits and
the subtle realization of just how narratively uninvolving all of this feels
and how the over the top chaos that ensues during it feels less like watching a
movie and more like watching a really bad Rube Goldberg machine run its
motions.
Despite my protests, “Dumbo” is not a terrible movie. For a
weekend out with the family, it’s not necessarily an unsafe bet to get the job
done and it does have occasional moments of visually creative brilliance that stand
well on their own and pay clever homage to the original film, despite the
soullessness of a screenplay they were bound to.
4 Pink Elephants out of 10
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