Live-action ‘Dumbo’ doesn’t fly so well

course “Dumbo” has been given the live-action retrofit, this time courtesy of offbeat auteur Tim Burton, who has tackled a few beloved children’s properties (“Alice in Wonderland,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”). On paper, there’s so much potential, but the result is a strange amalgamation of influences and agendas. Stretched thin, this dramatically inert film tries, but ultimately says almost nothing at all.

“Dumbo” fulfills the checklist Disney remakes these days require: a young heroine interested in science, a dead mother, a father scarred by war. It inexplicably warps an inherently archaic story premise into politically correct revisionist history with a relevant message, suggesting that in the exploitative, bullying world of 1920s circuses, wildlife conservation was also a concern.

But within this rigid Disney formula are a few flickers of resistance. Burton makes his signature stamp, manifested here in the visual design. And journeyman screenwriter Ehren Kruger’s script shockingly contains shades of subversion and anarchy, a little bit of rage against the machine. But everything seems dulled down, sharp edges blunted.

Burton dutifully dispenses with the quick hits of the “Dumbo” story within the first act, hitting each point in a manner that is perfunctory at best: mama elephant Jumbo, baby elephant Dumbo, big ears, bullying, jeers, feathers, flying. The film also gives us Milly (Nico Parker), her brother, Joe (Finley Hobbins), and dad, Holt (Colin Farrell). The family, reunited after Holt lost his arm in World War I and their mother lost her life to influenza, rally around the young elephant as his protectors.

Before long Burton has scrapped the iconic (but problematic) crows for Collette (Eva Green), a French trapeze artist, and Vandevere (Michael Keaton), a sniveling, snidely