Film Review: Dumbo

Following the original (drawn from the ‘Roll-A-Book’ written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl), but adding a few sub-Burton touches, removing the potentially racist talking animals and throwing in an awful lot of animal cruelty subtext (does it still count if all the animals are computer generated?), it should charm kids and adults almost despite itself. Mostly because, of course, Dumbo is so damn cute.

At the end of the First World War, former circus star Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returns to the Medici Bros. Big Top something of a broken man. He lost an arm in the fighting, his wife died of the Spanish flu a year before in his absence, and he’s alienated from his children Milly (Nico Parker, Thandie Newton’s daughter) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). And this is a children’s movie?

As he can no longer ride a horse, kindly ringmaster Max Medici (Danny DeVito in his fourth Burton epic) assigns him odd jobs, and we’re treated to some pleasant scenes involving the troupe as they train and joke around while Holt worries about how to reconnect with his kids. Farrell is fine in these early sequences, but his thunder is stolen when ‘Mrs. Jumbo’ gives birth offscreen to a scene-stealing baby pachyderm with huge ears and big, gooey eyes. Meet Dumbo – a name that’s supposed to be nasty but, well, what else could he be called?

Naturally Milly and Joe discover that Dumbo can fly if he inhales a feather, and initial demonstrations of his on-off talents lead to a visit from VA Vandevere (Michael Keaton, Burton’s Batman) and his luminous French girlfriend Colette Marchant (Eva Green, star of Burton’s Dark Shadows and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children). The obviously villainous Vandevere proposes a partnership with Max (and we’re reminded that DeVito was the Penguin to Keaton’s Dark Knight in Batman Returns), and then we cut to the Medici gang working at Vandevere’s FX amusement park as everyone waits for Dumbo to soar. All the while, moneyman J Griffin Remington (Alan Arkin from Burton’s Edward Scissorhands) looks on dubiously. What could possibly go wrong?

With its lovely, highly-stylised animated look, strong cast of Tim’s pals and awfully winning Dumbo antics, this has much to enjoy, and there might even be a point where you forget that Dumbo isn’t simply a digital animation, and you start to think of the darling little critter as real. Well, maybe.

After Alice In Wonderland, it does beg the question of which Disney classic remake Burton will tackle next – can we expect an even darker, more whimsical Fantasia starring Burton’s chief muse Johnny Depp as multiple brooms that just won’t stop?

Dumbo (PG) is in cinemas from March 28