BEFORE: I swear I didn't program a specific movie for Inauguration Day - I wasn't even thinking about it when I drew up plans. So no jokes tonight about politics being "a circus" of any kind, no references to Republicans (even though the elephant IS their party's symbol) and no connection between the name "Dumbo" and any particular politician of note should be inferred. You can draw connections if you want to, just be aware that this was not my intent, not at all.
Since it IS Inauguration Day, many people are invoking symbolism - it's the "dawn of a new day" and all that. OK, fine whatever helps you sleep at night and maintain some semblance of positivity, you hang on to that. Just let me know when I can go and sit in a restaurant again, or line up to get a vaccine in my arm - then maybe I'll start feeling a little more cheery. But right now, I still can't adult properly, I'm too busy sitting on my bed with the blankets over my head and rocking back and forth.
Look, I'm a pragmatic person, a realist - when somebody says, "Oh, look, the sun's coming up..." my first thought is, "Umm, no it's not, the sun's staying in one place, just doing what it does, it only APPEARS to rise and move through our sky. The earth is turning and creating the illusion that the sun is moving, relative to our individual position on the Earth's surface." This was all covered way back in the Renaissance, didn't you get the memo? We rejected the geocentric version of the Universe and all agreed to a heliocentric solar system.
The changing of the President, for me, right now anyway, is much the same. I'm hearing, "Oh, things have changed, it's a new era and everything can be better now." Again, I'm saying, "OK, maybe not, maybe it's just more of the same log jams and B.S. for the next four years." I'll admit that a change has occured, but it may also be a form of an illusion - in the past two weeks, the entire world has turned upside-down, and may have created the illusion that things are changing, relative to each individual's position in the political spectrum. The country is still radically and racially divided, domestic terrorists are still out there planning stuff, and a certain percentage of the population still believes that the election was rigged. I hope there is some massive change coming, and I'm proved wrong. Your move, Biden.
Consider how close the election was - we had the worst President in history, this is now confirmed by the double-impeachment and his absolute lack of class concerning a peaceful transfer of power, and STILL he got 47% of the vote. That was way too close - if not for the pandemic and cratering economy, Trump might have won the popular vote (for the first time). I'm not going to rest easy until Congress bars him from holding office again, for the sake of all the people who were dumb enough to vote for him twice and seem incapable of learning.
Alan Arkin carries over again from "Spenser Confidential".
THE PLOT: A young elephant, whose oversized ears enable him to fly, helps save a struggling circus, but when the circus plans a new venture, Dumbo and his friends discover dark secrets beneath its shiny veneer.
AFTER: OK, so I was made to watch all of the Disney animated movies when I was a kid - not that I'm complaining, many of them are fine films, however times have certainly changed, and certain movies like "Song of the South" have fallen out of favor because we simply can't show any racial stereotypes any more. The original "Dumbo" is sort of lumped into that category because of the crow characters, which were given voices that some people consider to be stereotypically Negro. Also, there are some very outdated tropes in the original "Dumbo", like showing storks delivering babies to circus animals, which is just ridiculous - but in the 1940's there were no adults who wanted to tell kids the truth about where babies come from, so there you go. Storks. I'm face-palming right now.
Also in that 1941 Disney film, Dumbo is cruelly treated and mocked because of his giant ears, but a talking mouse named Timothy convinces him he can fly, with the aid of a magic feather from one of those crows. Really, it's the size of his ears which Dumbo can flap like wings that enables him to fly - and eventually he comes to realize that it's not the feather, he had the power within him all along. What's really great about animation as a medium is that you CAN depict the impossible happening, as long as it can be drawn, and in this case you can discount the reality in which birds are able to fly because their bones are hollow, and therefore, by extension, since elephants do not have hollow bones, their weight ratio simply does not allow flight as an option, no matter HOW BIG those ears are.
Obviously, to do a re-make of "Dumbo", a lot had to be changed. None of the animals talk here, for one thing, so Timothy the Mouse is gone, as are the mocking adult elephants, and more humans needed to be added to the story to fill those gaps. In this version, Dumbo is trained and taught to fly by two children, Milly and Joe Farrier, whose parents had an act in the circus until he had to go fight in World War I and she had to go and die from the flu. (Timely, but probably accidentally so!). Also a number of prominent circus owners and operators had to be added to run things, and a fair number of performers, sideshow freaks and general carnies.
The feather is still important in enabling Dumbo to fly, but in an extremely confusing way. I wasn't sure if it was sneezing that launched Dumbo off the ground, or inhaling the feather into his trunk, or chasing the feather and then flapping his ears? I give up, which was it? And then if it was inhaling the feather that made him fly, how did this work, or was it just Dumbo's belief that inhaling the feather would make him fly? Very, very, clunky writing here. Eventually we get to the same place, where Dumbo learns that he had the power within him all along, but it takes SO DAMN LONG to get there, and the plot had to bend itself over backwards a few times to make it possible. The original film ran just over one hour, and this remake is nearly double the length, so it feels like a painful slog by comparison. The 1941 film made a more concise anti-bullying, "being different is beautiful" message in half the time!
Also, since the original film was released, society got together and decided that circuses are no longer culturally appropriate. OK, so between this one and "The Greatest Showman", why are we still making movies about them, then? The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus folded in 2017, after many animal rights-related criticisms, and you have to think that maybe that was for the best. Even if they'd managed to hang on a couple more years, the COVID-19 pandemic would have shut them down anyway. (There's a chain of brewpubs in NYC that I last visited around Christmas 2019, when I found out they were closing up two of their three Manhattan locations. I'm still wondering how they saw the pandemic shutdowns coming.)
I actually know the answer, because "The Greatest Showman" went a little overboard with its blatant message of cultural acceptance, for all people who are differently shaped or slighty abnormal or bearded ladies everywhere. "Dumbo" goes much, much further in this direction, and piles on one now-culturally-acceptable message after another, from the war veteran who's now missing an arm, to the young girl who wants to study science, to the plus-sized mermaid, the cruel animal trainers, etc. etc. It's one thing to depict being on the right side of history now, where these issues are concerned, but it makes no sense to have characters in 1919 who think like today's liberals or animal activists. It's doubtful that a young girl back then would have such an interest in the scientific method, because probably her whole life she'd been trained to think of herself as little more than a future wife, mother and homemaker. Just saying.
But as I always say, a movie released today probably reflects the cultural thinking of today, regardless of the era in which it is set. So there's a vast divide here between the way these characters think and act, and the way they probably would have acted in 1919. By the end, when the Medici Bros. circus has morphed into the "Medici Family Circus", with no animals being forced to perform, a "future cowboy" with a bionic arm, and a teen girl giving scientific lectures, it's supposed to feel refreshing from a modern viewpoint, but it just doesn't make any rational sense.
Before that, though, there was another attempt to amplify the "Dumbo" storyline, because here they had the small, traveling Medici Bros. Circus get co-opted, bought out and incorporated into a larger entity called "Dreamland", which looked suspiciously like a Disneyland-type theme park (supposedly located in NYC, but I didn't pick up on that...). The genius behind Dreamland is one V. A. Vandevere, and I couldn't help but think this person might have been loosely inspired by Walt Disney, himself. (Disney and perhaps Trump, but let's put aside the Trump thing for now, and just focus on the Disney comparisons.) If this was intended, it's a bold move for Disney Corp. to put out a film that pokes fun at their own founder. Confusing, but also bold. Disney was known as the master of the binding contracts, and here when Vandervere buys and essentially dissolves Medici circus, he's really only after the flying elephant. He promised to hire the entire circus staff, but he never said for how long, so after a month they're given their walking papers. Tricky, but technically legal, and I'm not sure that this devious move is a valid enough justification for Grand Theft Elephant.
We all eventually end up in a good place, and for Dumbo it's (more or less) where he ended up in the previous version. But why the hell did getting there have to be so damn complicated? And why were the kids always so dull and expressionless?
I do like that this is something of a "Batman Returns" reunion, with Tim Burton directing, and the actors who played Batman and The Penguin appearing in key roles - only with Michael Keaton in the villain role and Danny DeVito as the more heroic (?) ringmaster.
Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "Spotlight"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Eva Green (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, Roshan Seth (last seen in "Proof"), DeObia Oparei (also last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Joseph Gatt, Sharon Rooney, Miguel Munoz Segura, Zenaida Alcalde, Michael Buffer (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Ragevan Vasan, Frank Bourke, Phil Zimmerman (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Zelda Rosset Colon, Benjamin French, Jana Posna, Jo Osmond, Jewels Good, Lars Eidinger, Douglas Reith (last seen in "W.E."), Sandy Martin (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri").
RATING: 4 out of 10 firefighting clowns
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