![]() ![]() That corporate entity is embodied in Dumbo by former Batman Michael Keaton as V.A. Nominally, that’s not a strange premise for a movie aimed at children - embracing uniqueness over homogeneity is a fairly common theme - but it takes on an extra dimension as a Disney movie in the wake of a director’s wobbling career, and a merger that has left thousands out in the cold. Burton’s Dumbo hits some of the same beats, but at nearly twice the length of its predecessor, the film is much denser, dealing with the dangers of selling out to a huge, soulless corporate entity. Unlike most of the contemporary (and upcoming) Disney slate, Dumbo isn’t a beat-for-beat remake of the original movie. Burton has been on a bit of a cold streak Disney’s recent remakes ( The Jungle Book, Maleficent) have been canned at best and cultural nostalgia for the 1941 Dumbo isn’t quite as strong as the attachment is to, say, The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast.īut the little pachyderm flies, and, however improbable, Dumbo is Tim Burton’s best film in years. ![]() And while varying figures are floated for the film’s six-figure budget, it was finished in a year and a half - compared to, say, the five or so for a Walt passion project such as “Bambi.Like the odds against the big-eared baby elephant himself, the deck would seem to be stacked against Tim Burton’s Dumbo. Added bonus: Its exaggerated animals and one-note plot required no special effects.ĭisney relaxed his pressure on his animators to advance the medium, allowing, essentially, as noted in Neal Gabler’s biography “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination,” photostats of sketches rather than full layouts. But its simple, relatively linear story with few human characters meant, for Disney, that it was the right story at the right time. Both failed to bring in a profit in their initial runs, prompting the studio to look for quick turnarounds, the first of which was the slight - some may say tacky - Disney advertisement that was “The Reluctant Dragon.”īased on a then-unpublished children’s book by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, which Disney acquired the rights to in the late 1930s, “Dumbo” was initially conceived as a short. “Cold” is a word that appears in many descriptions of “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia,” films that are probably more adored today and are perceived as concluding Disney’s first major golden age.įinancially, budgets for “Pinocchio” and Fantasia” had swelled to well above $2 million, driven not just by Walt Disney’s desire for perfection but in his belief that animation is the ideal medium for telling mature stories. Culturally, Disney’s current films were perceived by the critical elite as lacking the warmth and whimsy of its “Silly Symphony” and Mickey Mouse shorts. ![]() If Disney were to survive - at least as Walt had envisioned it - it needed a hit, one that would be relatively cheap and quick to produce. And “Pinocchio,” as Walt Disney would defensively point out, had the bad timing of being released during mania for “Gone With the Wind.” World War II caused the studio to lose what was once estimated in this newspaper as nearly 40% of its market, and prior to “Dumbo’s” release, the company had sunk a heavy investment into its necessary-but-fancy new Burbank home. There were, it must be noted, factors out of Disney’s control contributing to the studio’s struggles. Those writing about film weren’t dismissive of “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia,” but the underlying current of many a review was that both movies lacked a certain soul or heart that was present in 1938’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Audiences too didn’t immediately warm to either, which placed a sudden financial burden on the burgeoning studio - one that just a few years earlier had hushed all naysayers with the exquisite, unexpected blockbuster that was “Snow White.” ![]()
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