You don’t get Guillermo del Toro without Tim Burton. The talented director has been obsessed with strange and scary things that are truly beautiful, like reanimated dead dogs. Dumbo seems like a perfect fit then for Burton, since the circus fits his taste for the macabre, but when you haven’t made a truly great film in 16 years, there’s going to be bumps trying to remake classic Disney material.
This new Dumbo takes place post WWI, with the Medici “Brothers” circus, which trains city to city. Catching up with the circus is Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), who lost an arm fighting in WWI, but is back to restart his life with his 2 kids Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). Max (Danny DeVito), both of the Medici brothers (there’s only one), has been trying to scrape by, and thinks he’s got a winner when the elephant he buys becomes pregnant. However, the little Jumbo Jr.’s ears are so big that he looks like a Dumbo, according to his audiences. Those ears, as discovered by blossoming scientist Milly, turn out to be a huge blessing, as the elephant can fly. The flying Dumbo becomes a big hit, which draws attention from the biggest entertainment couple on the planet, VA Vandevere (Michael Keaton) and Colette Merchant (Eva Green).
At this point, it’s widely known that Tim Burton is more interested in the strange people and creatures of the world. What that means for Dumbo is those people/characters get the most interesting material. The CGI elephant is totally adorable: kids seeing this movie will be asking for stuffed elephants for sure. It squeaks, wails, and looks longingly with those adorable blue eyes, making every mother of a baby, or pet owner instantly melt into a pile of tears for every sad scenario this poor little elephant is going through and cheer when something good happens. When not focused on our little elephant hero, Burton relies on his personal movie veterans to help carry the movie over the finish line. Danny DeVito, Eva Green, and especially Michael Keaton are all having a ball amping up the loopiness of their characters, finding enough humanity amid the eccentricity for a kids movie.
The big problem here is that most of the story of the movie is carried by the Farrier family, who are supposed to be the normal characters in a Tim Burton movie. That means they were doomed from the get go, as Burton films can’t write dialogue for normal people. The kids are hilariously wise about what Dumbo is going through, to the point that you’d think Colin Farrell would start listening to them instead of telling them to simply go to bed or read or whatever. By the time the third act rolls around, and everyone is rooting for Colin Farrell to save his family, I was wondering if it shouldn’t be the other way around, since Milly is clearly more clever than Holt is at any point in this movie.
The other big issue is the fact that none of the animals talk, meaning the creative team has to recraft the story essentially from scratch. This could be a blessing, since a shot for shot remake would have been Disney just cashing in on its own IP. But instead, we get a really strange kids movie that’s almost depressingly sad for an hour. By the time things look happy, they get really bleak again because our story is about a group of performers barely squeaking by. It’s also pretty strange and disingenuous to go to a Disney movie where the villain is a CEO of an entertainment industry that has theme parks. Kids won’t notice, but I saw a few eyerolls in the audience. Someone go check on Tim Burton and Ehren Kruger, make sure Disney hasn’t locked them up somewhere for that storyline.
Of the string of Disney remakes of their classic material, Dumbo is one of the weaker ones. It’s not totally bad; it’s just really forgettable, which is something you should not be saying about a flying elephant. Or Danny DeVito running a circus. Or Michael Keaton doing the Monopoly Man impersonation. Or a Mermaid manhandling 2 police officers. I told you Tim Burton can be a strange guy.