DUMBO

Kruger's screenplay has no discernible charm, weighed down by thudding dialogue and endless clichés, and Burton's direction either muddies these flaws further or makes no attempt to solve them. The film plods along with inconsistent rhythm and unclear tone, and while risking visual thrills, never actually goes far enough to achieve them. The production design may be a delight, but it feels too contrived, too fantastical, and even the costume design leaves a lot to be desired. You definitely get the sense that Burton cares about the film, but his direction feels tired, the old tricks abandoned but no new tricks to take their place. It's hard to believe that this is the same director who, just over a decade ago, directed 'Sweeney Todd' with such extraordinary skill and imagination, both things 'Dumbo' severely lacks. It does offer some interesting commentary on where Burton is at this stage in his career with a thematic thread around the evils of corporate interference and the collision of art and commerce, but this is never delivered in a way that makes it feel vital to the film, and the rest just feels so inert that it's hard to muster much enthusiasm for it.

Its failures as a film only amplify its overwhelming failure as an adaptation. As seems to be standard operating procedure for these Disney remakes, little care has been taken to understand why 'Dumbo' is a classic, reducing the original to a series of narrative and visual markers that, when robbed of proper development and context, mean basically nothing. What made the original so resonant was the relationship between Dumbo and his mother, something it was able to develop properly even with its short run time. This relationship and the fallout of their separation was the spine, heart and soul, but here that focus is drastically shifted and that relationship underdeveloped to the point where it has no impact at all. The film seems more concerned with getting to the separation and the song 'Baby Mine' than ever actually earning that moment; it's as if the film expects you to care about Dumbo and his predicament without ever actually earning your sympathy. Even the moment where Dumbo finally learns to fly - both the climax and a moment of empowerment and self-realisation for Dumbo in the original - is here reduced to a trick encouraged for the benefit of others. Dumbo's journey is secondary to that of the newly-invented human characters, for whom he becomes a means to an end. The beauty of 'Dumbo' was its sincerity and its simplicity, but this film is too overstuffed, too complicated, too flaccid and too superficial to even be bothered to reach for the same kind of effect.

And this really hits at the heart of why, with very few exceptions, these Disney remakes have been such a consistent failure. 'Dumbo' emphasises the sense that Disney fundamentally do not understand the films they insist on remaking, or even worse, that they don't really care. They see them as a series of iconic signifiers, but don't care about what sits at the heart and soul of them or what actually makes them iconic, instead constructing films built entirely to get from one moment to another with little care for what gets them there. The soul of 'Dumbo' is nowhere to be found here, the same as it was with 'The Jungle Book' and 'Beauty And The Beast', and just as it will inevitably be with 'Aladdin' and 'The Lion King'. They don't seem to care about integrity or coherence, but getting to those bits you loved as quickly as possible, even if they have no reason to be there (in this case, a recreation of the Pink Elephant sequence that sticks out so badly for having no context whatsoever). They know you're going to get all nostalgically emotional when 'Baby Mine' plays so that's their priority, getting a nostalgically emotional response out of you, whether the moment is earned or not. These Disney remakes are the weaponising of nostalgia for commercial purposes. They reduce great works of art to commercial properties, devoid of craft, care or consideration. One could argue that has always been the way with Disney, but I refuse to accept that. This is a company responsible for great works like 'Pinocchio' and 'Fantasia', 'Sleeping Beauty' and the original 'Beauty And The Beast', hell, even 'Mary Poppins' and 'Moana'. Of course the originals are still there and nothing will ever take away their magic or beauty, but that doesn't make it any easier watching them being reduced in this form to something gaudy and forgettable and uninspired.

In the end, the lasting impression 'Dumbo' left me with was of something tired and pointless. It has no reason to exist other than to exist, and that frankly is not good enough. Maybe Tim Burton was trying to make a comment about the struggles of artistic creation within a corporate context, but you know what, it's hard to buy into that when the film itself is such a corporate creation, reducing a work of art to a product to be sold and consumed as quickly as possible. And what the hell does all that have to do with a baby elephant who realises it can fly? 'Dumbo' will make a lot of money and people will go on about how much they cried during it and how emotional it made them because oh my god my childhood, did you know I watched this film in my childhood, my childhood, my childhood, my fucking childhood - but this film and this whole woeful remake endeavour doesn't deserve neither the money nor the praise. At least the original is as untouched and pure as ever, a film that has more heart and soul in its 64 minutes than this film does in its thunderously dull two hours.