Genre: Family/ Adventure/ Fantasy
Runtime: 112 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, Alan Arkin, Finley Hobbins, Nico Parker
Description: A young elephant, whose oversized ears enable him to fly, helps save a struggling circus. But when the circus plans a new venture, Dumbo and his friends discover dark secrets beneath its shiny veneer.
Review: Disney is trying go through their animations quickly, into creating live-action versions of them. In 2019 alone, we will get 4 of them. The first this year is “Dumbo”, about the little flying elephant. And it’s not a remake, because Tim Burton used his creative mind well.
What the original animation and this version have in common, is that they are both based off of the same children’s book. Director Burton is known for his visual stories with a dark edge and gave this story his signature touch. “Dumbo” has a darker and more cynical look at the circus world.
Circus director Max Medici is trying to keep his head above water in these crisis times, to keep his circus going. His main attraction was his horse act, but he had to sell the horses. When war veteran Holt returns, missing one arm, he is reunited with his children Milly and Joe. They find comfort now he’s back, because in the meantime their mother had died and their horse act has been removed from the program.
Max wants the elephants to be the major act now and he managed to buy a pregnant female. When the baby is born, Max thinks it’s an ugly creates. Baby Dumbo, what they call him later, is born with huge ears and many people mock him for it. But Milly and Joe see something special and find out that Dumbo can actually fly.
Visually this film is beautiful, as we are used to from burton. Dumbo looks adorable. His level of cuteness is very high! What also looked great was Dreamland, the giant circus by Max’ competition V.A. Vandevere. It looks like a typical steampunk fantasy world by Burton and I loved the look of it.
Not only the visuals are amazing. Burton managed to combine it with a heart warming story which had a sincere moral about confidence and the power of money. And there are many moments where you feel warm insight or need tissues for tears. Because even though it has a lot of happy moments, it is a pretty sad story as well.
Dumbo has to share his stage with some human characters and their side stories. They don’t all work, like the story of Eva Green’s character. It’s neglected a bit, which makes it flat.
I was surprised by the many negative reviews, because I think it was a beautiful film. It looks amazing and has a good story. Burton used his dreamy style to turn it into a live-action film and I think he did a wonderful job.
Rating: 4/ 5
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