Review | Dumbo film review: Tim Burton’s live-action take on 1941 Disney cartoon is a beautifully realised flight of fancy
- The film’s visual effects team has done a wonderful job of realising the playful pachyderm, who captures the imagination from the moment he appears
- Long-time Dumbo fans will get a kick out of the film, while a new generation of kids will surely fall for the elephant
3.5/5 stars
Tim Burton continues his career fashioned from re-imagining our childhoods: after Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes comes Dumbo. Inspired by the 1941 cartoon, it follows the pattern Disney has recently taken, rebooting some of its classic cartoons like Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book into live action.
Here Burton paints the story on a much bigger canvas, as a circus owner realises that, as the old song goes, an elephant can fly. The original cartoon ended with the titular creature using his oversized ears to take flight; here it becomes a mainstay of Ehren Kruger’s script.
The year is 1919 and the setting a travelling circus, run by Danny DeVito’s garrulous Max Medici. With his business empire failing, Medici suddenly hits the jackpot when it’s discovered that his new baby elephant – soon to be dubbed “Dumbo” – can flap its ears and fly.
An instant hit, it immediately attracts the attention of unscrupulous showman Vandevere (Michael Keaton), who wants to buy Dumbo and has to settle for taking on Medici’s whole circus. He promises the world to the likes of Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), the wounded one-armed war hero and former stunt rider, whose children Joe (Finley Hobbins) and Milly (Nico Parker) are the ones that first discovered Dumbo’s aerial abilities.
