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The Rotunda
Tuesday, July 29, 2025

The Reel Life: "Dumbo" (2019)

dumbo_photo_2019

Dumbo is a character beloved for how unloved he was while Tim Burton is a director who has built a career on giving the spotlight to exactly these kinds of characters. So, why shouldn’t the two of them meet in the middle for the latest of Disney’s live-action remakes?

Burton intelligently brings some of his past colleagues to this film: Eva Green (“Penny Dreadful,” “Miss Peregrine”), Michael Keaton (“Birdman,” “Batman”) and Danny DeVito (“Batman Returns,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), as well as frequent musical collaborator Danny Elfman (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Beetlejuice”).

Green does a serviceable job here, as does DeVito. Both are clearly doing the best with a shaky screenplay as their characters don’t really have an effect on the overall plot. DeVito’s character especially feels like he’s merely forgotten about in the latter half of the film. Keaton, meanwhile, walks the line between acting and chewing the scenery to pieces but oddly enough, it makes him the film’s most interesting character.

Keaton's character is also more interesting than the center family: Colin Farrell (“In Bruges,” “Horrible Bosses”) is, like the others, doing the best he can. It’s commendable and he does a decent job turning his father figure of Holt Farrier into the most emotionally resonating character in the film. However, his children are an entirely different matter.

Finley Hobbins is perfectly mediocre as Holt’s young son, Joe. He wants to have an act, does handstands and generally isn't annoying. However, Holt’s daughter Milly, played by Nico Parker, is an absolute disaster.

Not only does the movie seem determined to dumb her down into a one-dimensional STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) stand-in, but Parker turns out as one of the worst performances of the year. She consistently sounds flat, moving from having no emotion whatsoever to having a slightly higher inflection. It’s maddening as she is clearly meant to be the film’s emotional center and it's hard to take anything seriously as she delivers the most important lines in the flattest way possible.

Dumbo, meanwhile, is just fine. While he’s animated well, that’s all that can be said about him. He’s unassuming and cute but fails to make a real impact. His ridiculing doesn’t really register since the people around him, the circus folk, immediately care for him - his outcast nature doesn’t land because he never feels like an outcast. 

Because Dumbo never feels like an outcast, the central emotional crux of this story is gone. What else does Dumbo have if it isn’t an outcast story? Nothing.

What we’re left with is a movie with decent actors and some stellar visuals.

If there is one reason to see Dumbo, it's for the visuals. While most are CGI, it makes the actual sets like the latter half’s main location, DreamLand, really pop. When Dumbo does fly, it feels spectacular, even for a brief moment, like something out of a storybook. It’s Burton’s distinct visual style at its best, with deep colors conflicting with dark imagery to evoke some real menace. The CGI that does exist though, is painfully obvious. While Dumbo and his mother are well done, every other animal and item looks like cheap plastic. It’s as if 99 percent of the budget was given to Dumbo and the remaining one percent was spread out to everything else.

Along with the visuals, the music featured in the film is another great aspect. Elfman has created a confident and bizarre score that feels ripped from his heyday of 90s horror-comedies. The cheeky menace that reverberates from every musical note helps to elicit reactions when the film’s script falls flat. It also makes the Pink Elephants scene the best part of the entire film, despite how short it is.

There’s also a weird tonal disconnect at the heart of this film; not within the film itself but with the studio behind it. Here is a film about an animal who wants to be set free from its captivity in an amusement park, trapped by a charismatic man with a glowing smile who constantly talks about making “dreams come true”.

You’d be forgiven if you only saw the last hour of the film and thought it was a parody of all of Disney’s ideals. But, because it’s a legitimate Disney film, it makes it hard to take seriously. The film ends with messages about how no animal should be caged for human amusement which made it hard not to think of Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida.

Granted, Disney is not the worst company to have animals in theme parks, but that background knowledge makes everything feel disingenuous. It doesn’t go far enough in its Disney parallels or fun-poking to be considered self-parody either. It feels like being lectured by a teacher about not smoking cigarettes, to then be sold a vape by them later that day. Sure, it isn’t as bad, but it isn’t great, either.

All of this, in addition to an amazingly rushed third act, take the air out of “Dumbo”’s wings. While the film has some decent actors and a distinct visual and musical flair, none of that can save a movie when it lacks heart and soul. When Dumbo flies and the film talks about imagination, it only cements how creative and emotionally bankrupt it is. Sure, the elephant can fly, but it would be even better if he had a soul whilst doing it. 1.5/5