By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nico Parker, Finley Robbins, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, Roshan Seth, Joseph Gatt, DeObia Oparei, Sharon Rooney, Michael Buffer, Michael Keaton and Alan Arkin.
Rating: Good
Tim Burton brings “Dumbo”, an adaptation of the 1941 Animated Film and it´s entertaining.
The movie takes place around 1919 and centers in Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) a war veteran who just recently lost his arm during World War I.
Farrier returns with to the Circus runned by Max Medici (Danny DeVito) and asks for his old job back as a performer. Medici decides to help Holt by taking care of the elephants that are in the circus in particular Jumbo, a large female elephant.
One day Holt´s children Millly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins) discover a baby elephant with long ears who Jumbo just gave birth.
All of them put them the name of Dumbo and the kids find out that he uses his large ears as wings to fly. One day at a circus show, Mrs. Jumbo begins to attack circus crew members as they are harassing his baby son and she is separated by his child.
Now Dumbo will show his enormous talent which not only will represent a huge opportunity for Medici to go back on the trackof success, but for the young elephant to reunite with his mom again.
This version of “Dumbo” has all the visual elements that a Tim Burton movie does represent. It show darkness but at the same time it was a very colorful film, which is one of Burton´s trademarks.
When I heard that Burton was going to direct this version of “Dumbo” I was kind of hype since I have always being a follower of his work. Visually and in terms of the acting the film does deliver but I felt that the problem here was in terms of story.
Ehren Kruger who wrote the screenplay missed a lot of opportunities in terms of surprises and I feel here that the film was kind of predictable. I understand that the target was more for children but I was expecting in the case of the Dumbo for him to have a hard time on reaching his ultimate goal and I feel that everybody here didn´t have a huge trial on their way and the obstacles were handled very easily.
The ending I felt it was too cheasy and I believe that a montage would have been more visually instead of the fourth element that was used here.
Still I do think the movie does deliver the goods and Burton did a really good job in directing this film. It´s a blessing to see films by Tim Burton and if you are a fan of his work I believe that you won´t be disappointed.
“Dumbo” is a movie that served it´s purpose, which was to entertain and I did enjoy it. Still I believe that if the ending of the film would have been fixed the film could have been better and specially in terms of screenplay would have been less predictable.
That being said “Dumbo” is fun entertainment and I do recommend it despite the narrative flaws the movie has.