Movie Review: Tim Burton’s live-action ‘Dumbo’ too sad for intended audience

In 1941, Walt Disney was at a crossroads, breaking box office records with his first feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), but losing money on both “Pinocchio” (1940) and “Fantasia” (1940), which are now deemed classics but struggled on the brink of World War II.

As a result, Disney set out to make his next project a simpler, cheaper effort in an attempt to recoup some money. Thus, we got “Dumbo,” clocking in at a truncated 64 minutes and using watercolor backgrounds instead of the traditional oil paints. The low-budget gamble worked, as “Dumbo” became the most profitable Disney film of the 1940s, such a cultural hit that Time magazine nearly dubbed Dumbo its “Mammal of the Year” until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And yet, for all its success upon its release, “Dumbo” remains one of the more dated films of the early Disney canon, from its cell animation to its controversial Jim Crow flock. This is probably why it’s getting such a massive makeover this weekend in Tim Burton’s new live-action remake of “Dumbo,” which eliminates too many of the beloved elements of the original classic for a relentlessly gloomy endeavor that’s way too sad for its intended child audience.

More