Monday, January 6, 2020

2019 - IN REVIEW: BIGGEST SURPRISE


DUMBO

I am a massive Tim Burton fan to the point that I am sure many people could accuse me of being an apologist for this great director. Most people these days feel that Burton has lost his touch and becoming a caricature of his himself, but I can genuinely say with hand on heart that I have enjoyed all of Burton's recent features that have been poorly received. Even when the films aren't the greatest, there is always something that I really enjoy in them (“Dark Shadows” is the perfect example of this). However, very early on during the production of “Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children”, when it was announced that Burton's following film would be a live-action remake of “Dumbo”, I must admit I was livid, and thought it was a waste of his talents and a terrible idea altogether. In my mind, I just could not see how they could make the animated classic from 1941 work as a live-action film. For one of the first times in my life, I was not looking forward to a Tim Burton film.

Cut to a year or so later when the film's teaser trailer was released and after watching it, I thought that maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as I expected, although admittedly there still wasn't a huge lot to go on. Then when the film was released, so too came the (predictably) negative reviews. The film was soulless, a travesty to the original, Burton has lost his magic, blah blah blah. Honestly, in this day and age it almost appears chic to attack a Tim Burton film in a review, but I am ashamed to admit that these reviews did affect my own will to rush out and see the film. It was about two weeks after it had been released that I decided that I really should make the effort to see “Dumbo” on the big screen, so made my way out to do so. The cinema was fairly bare, almost as a precursor of what was to come, as it appeared no one was too interested in the film. The film began and to my surprise I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!! Seriously, I was blown away by Tim Burton's version of “Dumbo” and loved (almost) everything about it.

The parts of the original film that I could not get my head around working in a live-action film, such as all of the talking animals, Burton did away with. Gone are the talking storks, elephants and mice, but beautifully, Burton does make reference to them all. Even that weird looking train, “Casey Jnr.”, from the animated film is referenced in the train's design here, which brought a smile to my face. One of the greatest moments of this remake is when Burton also finds a way to make reference to the truly bizarre “Pink Elephants on Parade” scene, that occurs in the original when Dumbo is drunk. It is such an odd scene in the animated film that I was sure that it would not be retained here, but Burton came up with the most magnificent way to include it. One of the biggest aspects in regards to the 1941 film that Burton and his team had to overcome with their version was it's short running time. At only sixty four minutes long, the story is far too short to pad out and stretch to feature length and still make it work. As such, this new version follows the original story for the first hour before branching off on its own where Dumbo is sold as the attraction of a new and very large theme park, before he then sets off to find his mother who he is separated from earlier in the film. For mine, all of this new material works wonderfully well and fits with the first, more familiar hour of the film. While the film is rated PG, the second half goes to some quite dark places but with Burton behind the wheel, this is really no surprise.

One aspect of the film where Tim Burton excelled at is in his casting. Nearly everyone is fantastic here, with Danny DeVito being the absolute stand out playing the kind-hearted ringmaster of the circus. It is the first time DeVito and Burton have worked together since “Big Fish” from 2003, and as great as he was as The Penguin in “Batman Returns”, I think I would have to say that his performance here is his best in a Burton film yet. The reunions don't stop there though as Michael Keaton appears for the first time in a Burton film since 1992, the aforementioned Batman sequel being the last time the two worked together. Sadly though, it is his performance that is the only thing that I do not love about “Dumbo”. It is not that he is bad per se, but it screams caricature rather than character; his character never rang true for me. Eva Green was delightful as the elegant trapeze artist, while Colin Farrell oozed charm as the children's father and a war veteran who lost his arm in battle. Speaking of the children, both Finley Hobbins and Nico Parker are great in their roles (and thankfully never annoying, like kids can be in movies), with Parker the spitting image of her mother, Thandie Newton.

Now onto Dumbo himself, and I am delighted to say that I just fell in love with his design. He is obviously a full cgi creation, but the animators have given the elephant so much character and big beautiful eyes, that you cannot help but feel for this creature's plight. Amazingly, he fits perfectly into the world and you believe he is there amongst the actors. While his mother has been designed more as a photo-realistic elephant, Dumbo himself is slightly exaggerated in areas, but it just works so well. He feels alive, and you just care for him so much. The little fella is just so damned cute!

Behind the scenes, and once again Tim Burton has created another stunningly good looking film with “Dumbo”. This time around he has used Ben Davis as his cinematographer, and the pair have created gorgeous images leaning towards a lot of blues and reds. Burton's regular composer, Danny Elfman, has come up with one of his best scores yet here and there were moments during the film, like when Dumbo takes flight, when the music just takes over and the whole thing becomes sublime. Man, I love this film.

I could honestly talk about this film for ages, but what must be apparent by now is that Tim Burton's “Dumbo” will feature in my Top Twenty of 2019, so I should leave some things to talk about there. Suffice to say, I was very pleasantly surprised by just how much I ended up adoring “Dumbo”. It is such a great, and beautiful family film, and I also consider it Burton's best film since 2007's “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, something I never anticipated when the film was first announced.


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