![]() Oddly enough, in the flesh, the human characters aren’t rounded out enough for us to really care about them. Vandevere is the epitome of corporate greed, out for his own selfish purposes, Keaton just isn’t despicable enough. Even though we know Keaton’s villainous V. The anticipation of seeing DeVito and Keaton reunited with Burton 27 years after Batman Returns, is a small treat in itself, but compared to Dumbo’s soaring enchantment, the human performances often lack oomph. Kudos to Michael Kutsche’s commendable design of the flying pachyderm, in making such an impossible feat look so natural. It’s hard not to fall in love with Dumbo as we watch him accept his differences, adapt to his special skills, and miraculously learn to fly. It’s so convincing that we truly believe that this baby elephant can fly, and you want to applaud his aerial talents each time he does. We share his feelings when he warms to the children and Holt and even Green’s Colette. We share what Dumbo is feeling through the subtlety of his eyes and his facial expressions that capture his fear and sense of loss when his mother is taken. instead, now it’s only the humans who can speak talk, so this means all the animal emotion must be conveyed through the magic of CGI. ![]() Gone are the talking animals who nicknamed Jumbo Jr as Dumbo in 1941. Except Max meets V.A Vandevere (Keaton) who has his own villainous plans.īurton uses the foundations of the original animated feature and maintains the basic storyline while grounding it in realism. Their promise to him is that once he can fly they will buy his mother back. Milly (Parker) and Joe (Hobbins) soon discover the magic to Jumbo Jr and are soon teaching him how to fly. When Baby Jumbo is brought out to entertain the crowds, things go recklessly awry during the performance, and soon mother and child are torn apart. Sensing this strangeness might draw the wrong sort of attention, Max goes to great effort to hide Baby Jumbo with his big floppy ears. Except the new baby doesn’t look any other they have ever seen. It’s the children, played by Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins, who first discover that Jumbo has given birth to a baby elephant. train travels across America, the Medici Brothers Circus is hardly bringing in the crowds. Max Medici (DeVito) invests in Jumbo, hoping the arrival of a new elephant will improve the attractions for his struggling big-tent show. But seeing this story retold so vividly resonated and reminded me of how relevant this decades-old Disney classic remains.īurton takes on the task of re-introducing Dumbo to new generations with the sterling talents of Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Colin Farrell and Eva Green as his leads. It’s a news story that’s been pushed off the front pages to make way for reports on other travesties, so it hardly garners any coverage these days. As we watch Dumbo cruelly separated from his mother and taken to a freak animal exhibit, it’s hard not to think of the thousands of immigrant children taken away from their parents in our current political climate. She’s been branded a “killer monster” while trying to protect her baby. In Tim Burton’s live-action retelling of the beloved tale of young Dumbo separated from his mother, all Dumbo wants is to be reunited with his mother. ![]() Watching it as a Disney revival, I was too young to think of anything other than the magic of a baby elephant with ears so big he could fly - even though upon Dumbo’s first release in 1941, the world was certainly as fraught with the tragedy of separated families as it is once again today. There’s a sensitive political subtext to the new adaptation of Dumbo that didn’t register with me in the original animated classic I saw as a child.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |