REVIEW : Dumbo makes me sad for all the wrong reasons

Growing up in the 80s and early 90s, Tim Burton was my favorite director. I think, even as a child I recognized Steven Spielberg was “better” but I connected more with Burton’s movies. Other than E.T. I never felt like Steven Spielberg was making a movie that really expressed anything about himself. They were always wondrous fairy tales or escapist films but they had no hooks to dig into me.

Tim Burton, on the other hand was, once upon a time, the maker of these weird, original ideas. He had a unique visual style and off-kilter characters. His movies were like macabre fantasies about characters who, like him, we odd ducks in a world full of normals. His movies came from somewhere and as such they spoke to me (someone who also always felt like an odd duck in a world full of normies). Burton’s movies basically defined my childhood. If you have forgotten just how magical his first string of films was, these are his first eight films: Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas (not directed but everyone concedes the movie is basically his), Ed Wood, Mars Attacks, Sleepy Hollow.

Now? After thirty-five years of directing big movies, he seems to have lost his spark. Not only that but somewhere along the way he seems to have become incapable of making even a competent film. 2014’s Big Eyes teased being a turning point moment for the director, as did 2007’s Sweeney Todd, both hinting that he might grow into something different from what he’s been over the past twenty years (a maker of stale, Burtonesque stereotypes). Instead, that movie is looking more like an anomaly.

Which brings us to Dumbo.

This movie is just a mess. Visually it’s good, not great but good enough. There are little moments here and there when it feels like the old Tim Burton was at the helm. Those moments are rare, however, and the rest of the time I watched a pale imitation of the man who directed my childhood.

Probably the saddest thing about it is that it highlights just how far Burton has gotten away from what made his films special. Ironically enough, it’s his ability to direct actors.

Burton is an admittedly bad connector with people. Nevertheless, in his heyday he made that weakness a virtue, creating outcast characters, oddballs, or just people who, like him, had trouble connecting with people. This is the man who gave us Edward Scissorhands, who brought Pee Wee Herman to life better than anyone else, who made Ed Wood a hero of every wannabe bad director.

Say what you want about his take on Batman from a comics-purist standpoint, no one can deny that Burton didn’t find something in the story of a man so obsessed with vengeance that he dresses like a bat to beat up criminals. Batman Returns was even more misunderstood when it released, but now it’s viewed as Burton being Burton, telling the story of three misfits who don’t belong anywhere and who seem doomed to torment themselves and everyone around them until death.

Ichabod Crane was the same way; in Sleepy Hollow, he’s a scientist in an era that shunned modern technology. Again, the outcast and the misunderstood was the hero. Whenever Burton focused on that, built his movies around that, and kept his stories restrained in exploring those ideas, he soared. Whenever he got weird for the sake of it, his movies flat-lined. That started right around the time Planet of the Apes nearly killed him.

So blame Fox I guess.

The point is, through all those quirky and oddball movies, his quirky and oddball characters were fully realized and well-directed. The director who claims to struggle dealing with people used to direct Oscar-worthy performances (Martin Landau even won the Oscar for his role in Ed Wood). In Dumbo he doesn’t seem to know what to do to get a good performance out of anyone.

Whenever the real people are off screen the movie soars (no pun intended). Case in point is the Mad Elephant/Baby of Mine scene. It’s genuinely moving because it features two non-human creatures simply emoting over a touching song. The staging, timing, editing, everything works. But once the people start talking it’s like they’re high schoolers doing a bad play.

To be fair, the screenplay does the director no favors; it is egregiously bad, with some of the worst, most cliched lines ever in a major movie. Tim didn’t write the movie but his job is to direct the actors to make the most of the writing. Instead, holy cow these actors are horrid. Danny DeVito sounds like he’s reading his lines off of cue cards on an episode of SNL. There’s no reality to anything he says. The words feel detached from the world, like he’s not genuinely reacting to anything but instead is just saying his words without any context or understanding of the scene. It reminds me of the Star Wars prequels.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few moments that almost work: Michael Keaton is the only one giving anything resembling a performance. Dude is over-acting his head off and it pays off in spades. In a better movie it might be distracting but in a dull, stilted, and mostly lifeless affair as this, over-acting is an oasis. He’s the only one who seems to be enjoying himself. In fact, he acts like he’s in a different movie entirely and doesn’t realize he’s supposed to be sleepwalking.

The other bright spot came to me after about the fourth or fifth time Dumbo took flight. I watched him sail around the circus tent and I felt a flutter in my heart, the same feeling I got when Edward made the ice sculpture, or when Batman broke through the glass ceiling in the Art Gallery, or when the opening refrains of “Day-O” played at the beginning of Beetlejuice. That old feeling was back for a brief moment…and that’s when I realized the feeling wasn’t because of what I was seeing, because what I was seeing was the same CG-elephant fly in a circle that I’d already seen three or four times. No, the feeling was because of what I was hearing: Danny Elfman’s score, the chorus of “aaaahhh’s” mixed with strings that define his thirty-five-year relationship with Tim Burton.

Maybe it’s not Tim Burton that made my childhood; maybe it’s Danny Elfman.

I have been looking forward to this movie for a year. Dumbo always seemed like the perfect movie for the old Tim Burton. It’s about an oddball outcast, it has has a bizarre setting, and there’s plenty of opportunity to mix quirky humor and touching drama. I wish Tim had directed this in 1994 or 1989, or even 1999. But in 2019…he just doesn’t have the same spark to make it work.

I would have liked to have seen Burton direct an animated remake of Dumbo, using the story from the 1941 movie as its template, talking animals and all. Maybe something akin to Frankenweenie in art-style. This is what we got, however, and while I wish Burton had a better story to work with, even with the poor screenplay he had, he did little to improve it and certainly far less than his younger self would have. This was the movie where I finally realized the director of my childhood had given up.

And that makes me very sad.

4/10 – Dumbo’s music is on point, some of the visuals work, but the people let the production down, and the direction failed to stir anything out of them.

COMMENTS

Please read our Commenting Policy before you join in with the discussion.

Note: If you have email notifications enabled, please check your email spam folders to ensure emails are not missed.

9 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Bridget

1 year ago

I don’t think I’ll be watching this one. I normally love Burton’s work, but it sounds like he phoned it in with this one. I also don’t feel up to watching animal abuse.

Gavin the Binge-Watcher

I took it in late and this remake was just odd. I should have listened to reviews, but I remain hopeful that Tim Burton will rise again as a great director. Unfortunately, Dumbo won’t be the catalyst.

Snarky-Guru

I couldn’t sit through it, but not because it was a rotten film. It was the depiction of how elephants were commonly abused in the circus that I couldn’t handle. It was too real, too horrifying. I never really got it until I was sitting in the cinema watching this remake. I left at “Baby Mine.”

Stargazer

The rating of the review is very intriguing that I will surely watch this after watching Shazam on the weekend. The kids will be happy to see 2 movies in a day.

BlogTreasure

Dumbo is such a visual delight owing to Tim Burton’s experience but the plot seems really predictable (at times). The story tends to get lost at some point, with attempts to try and reclaim it towards the end. It almost feels like the great actors were underutilized.

Dave

Reply to BlogTreasure

I watched this movie once but to be sincere, I’d love to re-watch it. I do agree that Burton tries hard to make this movie visually impressive and hopefully, I will get to see other great aspects I could have missed. Would we regard it as being safe for kids?

Bigfoot

Reply to Dave

Burton may only be sticking to his filming qualities, so we won’t be disappointed with how Dumbo will be portrayed. I will be expecting that the movie will be full of musicals, even though I haven’t seen the movie yet because this is a Disney movie.

In this movie,Tim Burton relies on his experience to create great visuals and the overall story has a lot to do with delivering inspirational thoughts. Even with all these good points, this movie feels rather flat but I wouldn’t say that it is time for Burton to exit the stage yet.

I haven’t seen the movie so I will reserve the critic for now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Burton will stick to the story of the animated film with some or more twists. I like to watch it because I like Burton’s film and I hope this movie won’t disappoint.

Cookie	Description
_pxvid	This cookie is used for detection of the browser and distinguishing whether it is a real user or malicious bot.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	This cookie is used to keep track of which cookies the user have approved for this site.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-preferences	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Preferences".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-uncategorized	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Uncategorized".
CraftSessionId	This cookie name is associated with the Craft web content management system, where is functions as an anonymous session identifier.
csrftoken	This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks
DSID	To note specific user identity. Contains hashed/encrypted unique ID.
JSESSIONID	Used by sites written in JSP. General purpose platform session cookies that are used to maintain users' state across page requests.
PHPSESSID	This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed.
viewed_cookie_policy	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Description
b30msc
btc
CMST
cref
d
gpl
i
icts
ig_did
mdata
na_rn
na_sc_e
na_sr
na_srp
session_depth
visitor-id

Cookie	Description
__gads	This cookie is set by Google and stored under the name dounleclick.com. This cookie is used to track how many times users see a particular advert which helps in measuring the success of the campaign and calculate the revenue generated by the campaign. These cookies can only be read from the domain that it is set on so it will not track any data while browsing through another sites.
__stid	The cookie is set by ShareThis. The cookie is used for site analytics to determine the pages visited, the amount of time spent, etc.
_ga	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randoly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_gtag_UA_60765351_1	Google uses this cookie to distinguish users.
_gid	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
ad-id	Provided by amazon-adsystem.com for tracking user actions on other websites to provide targeted content
demdex	This cookie is set under the domain demdex.net and is used by Adobe Audience Manager to help identify a unique visitor across domains.
DigiTrust.v1.identity	Registers data on visitors’ website-behaviour. This is used for internal analysis and website optimization.
dmvk	This cookie is set by DailyMotion who display videos, it registers statistical data of visitors' behaviour on the website.
gid	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
GPS	This cookie is set by Youtube and registers a unique ID for tracking users based on their geographical location
is_unique	This cookie is set by StatCounter to determine how people are using the website
is_visitor_unique	This cookie is set by StatCounter to determine how people are using the website
sc_is_visitor_unique	This cookie is set by StatCounter to determine how people are using the website
v1st	This is set by DailyMotion to display videos.

Cookie	Description
__asc	This cookie is used to collect information on consumer behavior, which is sent to Alexa Analytics.
__auc	This cookie is used to collect information on consumer behavior, which is sent to Alexa Analytics.
__qca	This cookie is associated with Quantcast and is used for collecting anonymized data to analyze log data from different websites to create reports that enables the website owners and advertisers provide ads for the appropriate audience segments.
_cc_aud	The cookie is set by crwdcntrl.net. The purpose of the cookie is to collect statistical information in an anonymous form about the visitors of the website. The data collected include number of visits, average time spent on the website, and the what pages have been loaded. These data are then used to segment audiences based on the geographical location, demographic, and user interest provide relevant content and for advertisers for targeted advertising.
_cc_cc	The cookie is set by crwdcntrl.net. The purpose of the cookie is to collect statistical information in an anonymous form about the visitors of the website. The data collected include number of visits, average time spent on the website, and the what pages have been loaded. These data are then used to segment audiences based on the geographical location, demographic, and user interest provide relevant content and for advertisers for targeted advertising.
_cc_dc	The cookie is set by crwdcntrl.net. The purpose of the cookie is to collect statistical information in an anonymous form about the visitors of the website. The data collected include number of visits, average time spent on the website, and the what pages have been loaded. These data are then used to segment audiences based on the geographical location, demographic, and user interest provide relevant content and for advertisers for targeted advertising.
_cc_id	The cookie is set by crwdcntrl.net. The purpose of the cookie is to collect statistical information in an anonymous form about the visitors of the website. The data collected include number of visits, average time spent on the website, and the what pages have been loaded. These data are then used to segment audiences based on the geographical location, demographic, and user interest provide relevant content and for advertisers for targeted advertising.
_kuid_	The cookie is set by Krux Digital under the domain krxd.net. The cookie stores a unique ID to identify a returning user for the purpose of targeted advertising.
_px2	This cookie is set by PerimeterX who provide security analyst oversight.
_pxff_tm	This cookie is set by PerimeterX who provide security analyst oversight.
_pxhd	This cookie is set by PerimeterX who provide security analyst oversight.
ab	This cookie is generally provided by agkn.com and is used for advertising purposes.
ad-privacy	Provided by amazon-adsystem.com for tracking user actions on other websites to provide targeted content to the users.
ayl_visitor	This cookie registers data on the visitor. The information is used to optimize advertisement relevance.
bafp	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bafp_t	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn_pl	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn_rf_8b2087b102c9e3e5ffed1c1478ed8b78	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn_rt_8b2087b102c9e3e5ffed1c1478ed8b78	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn_t_8b2087b102c9e3e5ffed1c1478ed8b78	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bfp_sn_td_2d31c94105a0aa6d1ceaea0c86c6b656	This cookie is from Media.net and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
bito	This cookie is generally provided by bidr.io and is used for advertising purposes.
bitoIsSecure	This cookies are generally provided by bidr.io and is used for advertising purposes.
bsc	The cookies is set by ownerIQ for the purpose of providing relevant advertisement
CMID	This cookie is linked to advertising and tracking the products users were looking at.
CMPRO	This cookie is linked to advertising and tracking the products users were looking at.
CMPS	This cookie is linked to advertising and tracking the products users were looking at.
dc_id	This cookie is used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator's permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers.
did	The purpose of the cookie is to identify a visitor to serve relevant advertisement.
didts	The purpose of the cookie is to identify a visitor to serve relevant advertisement.
dpm	The cookie is set by demdex.net. This cookie assigns a unique ID to each visiting user that allows third-party advertisers target that users with relevant ads.
eud	This cookie is from Rocket Fuel and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
euds	This cookie is from Rocket Fuel and is used to deliver targeted advertising across their network sites ensuring users see relevant advertising.
everest_g_v2	The cookie is set under eversttech.net domain. The purpose of the cookie is to map clicks to other events on the client's website.
evo5_popin_instance	Prevents an interaction from reoccurring for visitors not accepting 3rd party cookies.
id	This cookie is set by DoubleClick (which is owned by Google) to build a profile of the website visitor's interests and show relevant ads on other sites.
IDE	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
io.narrative.guid.v2	This cookie is generally provided by io.narrative.io and is used for advertising purposes.
KADUSERCOOKIE	This cookie is generally provided by pubmatic.com and is used for advertising purposes.
KTPCACOOKIE	This cookie is generally provided by pubmatic.com and is used for advertising purposes.
matchliveramp	This cookie is provided by w55c.net and is used for advertising purposes.
mc	This cookie is associated with Quantserve to track anonymously how a user interact with the website.
mxpim	This cookie is generally provided by mxptint.net for advertising purposes.
na_tc	This is a Social Media sharing tracking cookie.
NID	This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.
nnls	The purpose of the cookie is to identify a visitor to serve relevant advertisement.
pxrc	The purpose of the cookie is to identify a visitor to serve relevant advertisement.
pxvid	This cookie is set by PerimeterX who provide security analyst oversight.
rlas3	The cookie is set by rlcdn.com. The cookie is used to serve relevant ads to the visitor as well as limit the time the visitor sees an and also measure the effectiveness of the campaign.

Cookie	Description
__jid	Cookies set on the website by the third-party commenting platform Disqus.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
disqus_unique	These cookies are set by Disqus so that users can comment on website/platform.
G_ENABLED_IDPS	The cookie is used by Google and is used for Google Single Sign On.
mid	The cookie is set by Instagram. The cookie is used to distinguish users and to show relevant content, for better user experience and security.
na_id	This cookie is set by Addthis.com to enable sharing of links on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
ouid	The cookie is set by Addthis which enables the content of the website to be shared across different networking and social sharing websites.
ov	This is a generic functional cookie that provides enhanced functionality and personalisation.
ts	This cookie is generally provided by PayPal and supports payment services in the website.
vuid	These cookies are used by the Vimeo video player on websites.

REVIEW: Dumbo makes me sad for all the wrong reasons

You might also like

FIND THE TOPICS YOU WANT...

Recommended for you