Dumbo reaches new heights
Tim Burton’s very modern remake is great, but tusk, tusk – why is Michael Keaton in it?
Anyone revisiting the original 1941 version of Dumbo will be unavoidably struck by two things: first, the enduring vibrancy of Walt Disney’s Technicolor animation and, second, the film’s astonishing political incorrectness by today’s standards.
Among its many perceived sins, it places the adult bullying of infants and human cruelty to animals at the very heart of its story, unashamedly perpetuates racial stereotypes and casually endorses drunkenness in minors, albeit minors of the physically challenged, pachyderm variety. Oh, and you’ll probably notice a third thing too: said pachyderm doesn’t actually fly until about four minutes before the end.
So, right from the opening frames of the live-action remake, it’s clear that things are going to be different this time around.
Yes, there are still storks flying over the winter quarters of the Medici Bros’ circus but they no longer deliver baby elephants in their beaks. Mrs Jumbo will have to give birth by more conventional means.
As for the muscular circus labourers, they’re certainly not all black now and won’t be launching into a demeaning chorus of ‘We’re happy-hearted roustabouts’ any time soon. With Dumbo taking to the air barely 15 minutes in, director Tim Burton could not be providing a clearer signal of ‘all change’.
As part of that change, the initially rather thin story has been expanded and developed, largely, but not entirely, for the good. Now set in 1919, it sees Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returning to the circus from the Great War, minus an arm and still mourning his wife, who apparently succumbed to the 1918 pandemic of Spanish flu. No wonder his two children, Milly and Joe, are so pleased to see him. But times are tough for a travelling circus, despite the best noisy efforts of its indefatigable owner, Max Medici, played with evident relish and big-top showmanship by Danny DeVito. Holt’s show horses have been sold and the only job Max can offer him is looking after the elephants, pregnant Mrs Jumbo and all. Holt isn’t keen but his children, particularly the solemn, serious and scientifically inclined Milly, are. So when Mrs J gives birth to a cute, blue-eyed baby with the most enormous ears, it’s the children who become his chief protectors and, in the face of incontrovertible early evidence
that Jumbo Jr can fly, his chief trainers too.
I loved the first hour, which is nothing like as dark as most Burton offerings, which often include DeVito (remember his nightmarish Penguin in Batman Returns?). Here he’s more of the lovable, monkey-tormenting rogue, who may noisily demand his money back when Dumbo’s physical imperfections become apparent but still, one suspects, has a heart of gold. The same cannot be said of that other veteran of Batman Returns, Michael Keaton, when he arrives as the sinister, blond-wigged amusement park owner, V A Vandevere. He seems to have stepped out of a different, more Burtonesque film altogether, and there’s no doubt Dumbo – as both film and indeed, by now, aerobatic elephant – feels unbalanced as the film builds to rather too big a climax at Vandevere’s Dreamland amusement park. The cruelty of the story still jars – ‘Dumbo, Dumbo, fake, fake, fake,’ chant the crowd as his big-top debut goes horribly wrong and the barred wagon with the warning sign ‘Mad Elephant’ – one of the iconic images of the original – makes an equally unsettling reappearance.
But other echoes of the first film genuinely charm. Look out for regular appearances of the ‘magic feather’ supposedly responsible for Dumbo’s flying abilities, and for a very clever, alcohol-free reworking of the extraordinary, psychedelic ‘pink elephant’ sequence.
With Eva Green spot-on as the French trapeze artist Colette (goodie, baddie, who knows?) and some wonderfully envisioned big-top sequences, this is very much a Dumbo for our times.
You may not quite come out believing an elephant can fly… but it will be close.