4 – Dumbo
I saw Dumbo when I was really little
and I barely remember it at all. I do remember that I didn't like it
very much as a kid so I was wondering what I would think of it now.
After seeing it, I think I would, unfortunately, agree with my
younger self.
The movie starts off really great. It
sets up the story well with the storks and the mother elephant
(Jumbo) who wants her own baby. I really appreciated that there
wasn't a narrator to spell everything out. This really let the
animation and the character's facial expressions to really tell the
story with some help from the music.
Unfortunately, it kind of starts going
downhill after that. The story is paced really bizarrely. There are
really long music segments that basically have nothing to do with the
plot and just fill time. There's a long segment where Dumbo and
Timothy Q. Mouse get drunk all so they can end up in a tree the next
day to get to the next plot point. Near the end they introduce these
vaguely racist crows who sing a long song that basically spells out
that they're jerks just like all the other ones Dumbo has faced. Now,
I'm not against musical sequences. The big problem was that none of
them seemed to actually develop any character or move the plot
forward in any significant way. The great thing about Pinocchio
was that each of those musical sequences revealed more about each of
the characters involved. Here, we have “Pink Elephants on Parade”
which would've fit right in with Fantasia
but didn't really tell us anything about how Dumbo was really
feeling. All it was was a dumb excuse to shoehorn in the fact that he
can fly.
I
think if this movie was made today I would have done some things
pretty differently. Near the end they introduce this “magic
feather.” It's basically just something the crows give to the Mouse
to have him convince Dumbo that he can fly even though it's basically
worthless. Dumbo then loses it right before he's about to show the
world he can fly and the Mouse explains what it is and Dumbo manages
to fly anyway. That really feels like a missed opportunity to me. If
they introduced the flying idea earlier they really could have used
this idea to emphasize how unconfident Dumbo is after being called a
freak for so long. I also would have spent a lot more time with Dumbo
actually learning to fly. This should have been the visualization of
Dumbo changing as a person-elephant? And would have given him some
real character development. If they showed him working for it and
showing that it was more difficult, then we (as an audience) would be
rooting for him even more at the end.
I
didn't hate all of it though. Even though the “Pink Elephants on
Parade” scene was pointless, I did really enjoy the animation and
the way it worked with the music. I also really enjoyed every
interaction Dumbo had with his mother. They were all legitimately
touching and you could really tell how much they cared about each
other even though neither of them spoke very much. Overall, I think
I'm starting to expect more from Disney now that I've seen Pinocchio.
The days of Snow White
and having no character development or really interesting plot is
behind them. I felt like Dumbo
was just too safe. It didn't really take any risks. Disney knew that
people liked music sequences and cute characters so they made this to
make up for the experiment that was Fantasia.
You
really can't say that the next one was Disney playing it safe...
4
down. 49 to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment