OK, of all the films to give to Tim Burton, why this one?
I get giving Tim Burton
another Disney remake, much as his Alice remake sucks, like a lot, it did make a lot
of money for Disney and this was likely in production before Disney found out
about the long-term damage it caused with the failure of Into the Looking
Glass. But Tim Burton is more a visual director, he has a unique style and
Dumbo, it’s a fairly simplistic tale.
But it’s not just Burton
here, who did they get to write this? Ehren Kruger? OK, what’s his history?
Oh… Oh no!
The film had a quite
substantial $170m budget, a decision Disney would live to regret as it made a
$350m at the box office. With marketing costs factored in, the film needed a
$500m win to break even, so the film lost money.
The animated Dumbo is perplexing and very much a production of its time, not just because of its unfortunate ethnic stereotypes. The film had a very low budget, partly attributed to the financial failure of Fantasia and partly to the war closing the European market, and it shows. Where the animators didn’t need to put in the detail, the detail isn’t there. That said, the main story focus is charming and it’s mostly harmless. How do they ruin that here, well let’s take a look.
