A CLASSIC REMAKE? NOT ON YOUR NELLIE
Dumbo flies again, but the lovable Disney elephant is so weighed down with political correctness he can barely take off ...
Dumbo (PG) Verdict: Nothing to trumpet about
Both on screen and off, the 1941 animation Dumbo was a dark one for Walt Disney and his studio.
It was conceived and made hastily, to recoup the losses incurred the year before by the extravagant Fantasia, and then, during production, the animators went on strike. If you look carefully, you can see segments in which the drawings, by Disney standards, are strangely slapdash. Years later, to cap everything, the film was accused of racism.
the wonderful song When I See An Elephant Fly is sung by five jive-talking black crows. they are clearly meant to sound AfricanAmerican. they are also sublimely smart and witty. So furious accusations of racial stereotyping seem a little desperate.
there was even more nasty racism in 1941 than there is now, but I’m not sure the Dumbo crows were in the vanguard.
All of which brings us to tim Burton, whose live-action reimagining of the Dumbo story conspicuously puts some of the words of that song in the mouth of a (white) ringmaster.
he seems determined to right all the wrongs supposedly perpetrated by the 1941 film, which for all its foibles, is unequivocally a classic. It was certainly a huge favourite in our house when my children were little. they were captivated by the story of the baby circus elephant with ears so big they enabled him to fly.
the harrowing separation from his mother, not to mention the wacky hallucination scene in which a drunken Dumbo sees a parade of pink pachyderms, did not deter them from watching it again and again. And again.
Burton’s version, I can safely suggest, will not claim the hearts of generations of children in the same way, nor will anyone clamour to see it repeatedly. today’s computer-generated imagery, it turns out, cannot make an elephant fly quite as convincingly as a team of clever animators could almost 80 years ago.
So for that reason, and several others, this non-musical Disney version, hard though it tries, simply never recaptures the abundant charm and magic of the original. Actually, a few good songs might have helped.
on paper, it makes sense for Burton, who once gave us a man with scissors for hands, to work with an elephant with ears for wings. the 60-year- old director
of the 1990 hit fantasy Edward Scissorhands, something of an oddball himself, likes to tell stories about social misfits.
But on screen, Burton’s personal
antipathy towards zoos and circuses, which he has spoken about in interviews, looms all too large.
Of course, cruelty to animals should be abhorrent to rightthinking folk everywhere, yet his film is undermined by the worthiness of its animal-rights message. Circuses don’t have to be magnets for leering voyeurs. They can be places of innocent joy, too.
As for the narrative that so many of us know so well, Burton, and his screenwriter Ehren Kruger, have given it a sharp twist.
In 1919, a World War I veteran, Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), comes home from the Western Front with only one arm. With a full complement of limbs, he was an acclaimed horseman with the Medici Bros Circus.
Now, sneaky Max Medici (Danny DeVito) wants to downgrade him to humble elephant carer. Yet his children’s loss is even greater; while daddy was away at war, mommy died in a flu epidemic.
This gives us a double-whammy of motherlessness, because the circus’s prize elephant, Mrs Jumbo, is soon carted off in chains for causing a hoo-hah in the Big Top.
So poor Jumbo Jnr, propelled airborne whenever a feather makes him sneeze, and renamed Dumbo by a typically boorish member of the audience, has only the cute Farrier kids, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), as a source of love.
Young Parker, incidentally, is British, the daughter of actress Thandie Newton and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again director Ol Parker.
She looks the part and does her best, but, to be brutally honest, some of the childacting in this film verges on the wooden.
To see a seasoned old pro hit all his marks, they had only to look down. DeVito is on fine form as Max, for whom Dumbo is good for only one thing: boxoffice takings. His business is on its uppers and he needs a new attraction. But Dumbo’s unique talent, and associated misadventures, soon pique the interest of a much greater showman, ruthless V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton). He wants this elephantine smash for his super-circus, and he wants his sexy,
French trapeze- artist girlfriend, Colette Marchant (Eva Green), to ride the little weirdo through the air. He makes Max his partner, promising him a taste of the big time.
All is going swimmingly, or rather flyingly, until Dumbo is lured out of the Big Top by the distant call of his dear old momma.
So Vandevere schemes to have her terminated, only — and since this is a Disney film, I really don’t think this counts as a spoiler — to be thwarted by a righteous alliance of the Farriers, Colette and all the perceived ‘freaks’ in the circus.
Some of this is fun. Some of it shows great expertise in the CGI department. Dumbo himself is rendered pretty much as he was in the animated version, with big blue eyes that either sparkle with happiness or cloud with sorrow. AND
it’s always a pleasure to see those two charismatic actors, Keaton and DeVito, (deadly enemies as Batman and Penguin in Burton’s 1992 film Batman Returns) bouncing off one another.
They each get some slick oneliners, as does venerable Alan Arkin, stealing the few scenes he’s in as the financial muscle behind Vandevere.
But there are a few crucial ingredients missing here, and one thing very much present that nobody acknowledges.
The animal-rights message is hammered hard, Dumbo certainly doesn’t get drunk, and I’ve already mentioned When I See An Elephant Fly.
Yes, I’m afraid that political correctness is the elephant in the room.
A SHORTER version of this review appeared in Wednesday’s paper.