Dum­bo

Tim Bur­ton changed the Dis­ney game in 2010 when his live-action adap­ta­tion of Alice in Won­der­land took over $1 bil­lion at the glob­al box office. Ever since then, Dis­ney has been organ­is­ing remakes of just about every title in their hal­lowed vault with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion, piv­ot­ing from orig­i­nal sto­ries to those with a built-in audi­ence of adults and chil­dren who are already famil­iar with the plots, char­ac­ters and songs. At the time of writ­ing, sev­en of these titles have been released, with two more due before the end of the year and a fur­ther eight in pro­duc­tion. In short: Bur­ton has an awful lot to answer for.

On paper, tap­ping the cre­ator of Big Fish and Edward Scis­sorhands to bring the sur­re­al sto­ry of an out­cast ele­phant with a spe­cial gift to life feels like a no-brain­er. When Bur­ton is at his best, his knack for visu­al spec­ta­cle and whim­sy is a gen­uine delight. When he’s at his worst… we end up with Dark Shad­ows. But this nou­veau Dum­bo should work: it boasts a direc­tor with a flair for the the­atric; an all-star cast includ­ing three Bur­ton alum­ni in Dan­ny DeVi­to, Eva Green and Michael Keaton; even an oblig­a­tory Dan­ny Elf­man score. It’s quite impres­sive, then, that the end prod­uct is such a gigan­tic disappointment.

The orig­i­nal 1941 Dum­bo – run­ning at 64 min­utes – is beau­ti­ful in its sim­plic­i­ty, and despite the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter being silent, he’s very much the heart of the film. In Burton’s swollen 112-minute ver­sion, Dum­bo is rel­e­gat­ed to a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in his own ori­gin sto­ry, as room is made for a whole new cast of wacky characters.

Chief among them is Col­in Farrell’s Sad Dad Holt Far­ri­er, who returns from the bat­tle­fields of World War One to the trav­el­ling cir­cus he calls home. He’s now minus an arm and minus a wife, who died while he was away, but his two chil­dren, Mil­ly and Joe (Nico Park­er and Fin­ley Hob­bins) are hap­py to have their pop back. Mean­while, zany mas­ter of cer­e­monies Max Medici (DeVi­to) has acquired a preg­nant Asian ele­phant named Mrs Jum­bo, whose baby he intends to make the star of his show.

What fol­lows is a long, long sto­ry that briefly touch­es on avi­at­ing ele­phants, the tyran­ny of cap­i­tal­ism, and uh, lit­tle girls who want to be sci­en­tists. Much like the sen­so­ry over­load you might expe­ri­ence at a car­ni­val, there are so many things going on it’s hard to know where to real­ly start – espe­cial­ly since the only thing one real­ly wants to watch is the sweet baby elephant.

The only cast mem­ber who appears to be enjoy­ing him­self is DeVi­to, game­ly don­ning the ring­mas­ter get­up once more hav­ing first done so for Bur­ton in Bat­man Returns and then Big Fish. Michael Keaton’s vil­lain­ous ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, VA Van­de­vere, is per­haps the great­est dis­ap­point­ment, as he looks total­ly bored – but it’s hard­ly Keaton’s fault, giv­en how lit­tle there is for him to play with. Eva Green is sim­i­lar­ly wast­ed in the thank­less sup­port­ing role of ​‘French Trapeze Lady’ Colette Marchant. Even the CGI ele­phant looks like he’s phon­ing it in.

While Burton’s film retains the ​‘Baby Mine’ scene which has made count­less chil­dren and par­ents weep for 70 years, the rest of the musi­cal num­bers are nixed, only briefly allud­ed to (a stork near the film’s open­ing, a half-heart­ed Pink Ele­phants ref­er­ence). And where Jon Favreau cre­at­ed a lush, immer­sive world in 2016’s The Jun­gle Book while retain­ing the spir­it of the orig­i­nal, Burton’s film lacks a strong visu­al iden­ti­ty, as well as that most essen­tial Burton/​Disney ele­ment: a great vil­lain. There’s no sense of won­der, no sprin­kling of mag­ic dust.

There was a time, of course, when Dis­ney made orig­i­nal films, rather than sim­ply churn­ing out sequels and ​‘live-action’ reboots of the sto­ries they own the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights to. Lav­ish musi­cal num­bers, bold and colour­ful worlds, snap­py kid-friend­ly run­times, and a strong mes­sage at the end of it all: there was a for­mu­la, but the for­mu­la worked.

It’s now 10 years since Disney’s last hand-drawn ani­mat­ed fea­ture, The Princess and the Frog, which was con­sid­ered a box-office dis­ap­point­ment and ush­ered in the age of Frozen and the cur­rent spate of hit-and-miss updates. Giv­en the num­ber of these films cur­rent­ly in devel­op­ment, it’s clear that Dis­ney is firm­ly wed­ded to this new mod­el, but Dum­bo is proof that even when you have an idea that feels like it should work, it’s all about the execution.