Dumbo (1941)

Wonderful character development!

Who payed the critics

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Dumbo is a unique animation, though short and thin story wise.Minus the standout moments, for the most part it's an odd mixture of cuteness and cruelty. My favourite parts of the film are the comedy parts; the two waking up in the tree with the crows and the clowns skit putting out the fire. The pink elephants scene is completely nuts.

I will never get how people still say that Bambi losing his mother is the worst in the classic disney films. For me it's Dumbos mother being imprisoned because she tries to protect her child. Yes, she's not dying, but it's still so very sad! And then we get this little adventure for Dumbo and his mousey companion. These two always remind me of Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The parade of the elephants - which Dumbo and Timothy Mouse are seeing when they're drunk (!) - is one of the craziest drug moments Disney ever did (probably only Alice in Wonderland can match it with it's weirdness). And it's so much fun to see Dumbo fly in the end and how he becomes a worldwide phenomenon after he got bullied around for such a long time.

The Disney Studio reached its peak with PINOCCHIO and FANTASIA. Both of these films are generally considered to be the pinnacle of animation and for good reason. The artists went all out with visual lushness, elaborate use of the multiplane camera, and extensive special effects. Yet, the timing of the production and release of those films could not have been worse. WWII and economic setbacks caused both films to lose money at the box office. This led Walt to produce a film on a modest budget to recoup the costs.When comparing DUMBO to the films that preceded it, one can see that the lushness is not there. However, lushness doesn't equate to an excellent film. And without a big budget, DUMBO is a showcase of what a Disney film was all about; solid storytelling with solid character animation. Although very few other animation studios at that time had the budgets to produce a film like PINOCCHIO, they're films almost never elicited an emotional response from audiences like a Disney film did. And with a modest budget, DUMBO has stood the test of time as a prime example of that.There has been some controversy in recent decades regarding the crows that befriend Dumbo. I don't question why modern viewers may object to the stereotyped depiction, but it's never made sense to me why DUMBO has been readily available for decades on home video when SONG OF THE SOUTH has not. Both films have characters rooted in derogatory stereotypes (i.e. the head crow's name is Jim Crow, but his name isn't uttered in the film). I haven't seen a consistency with the stance on political correctness.Although not having the lushness of PINOCCHIO, DUMBO is often cited as one of Disney's greatest films.

Sorry, but I don't see anything racist here--I just see crows, who are of course black, parodying humans, who come in all colors, and they are no more representative of real people than Lucy and Desi were representative of all redheads married to Cuban bandleaders or Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges were representative of all white men. They are funny and happen to be black, not black and therefore funny. There's a difference. (Just for the record, that's how I judge all ethnic humor: is it humor that happens to be ethnic, or is it an insult veiled in humor? I can chuckle at Chico Marx's pseudo-Italian because there's no insult intended in most of his movies--he exaggerated and put a funny spin on what he'd seen growing up. Those "scaredy-cat black sidekick" characters, however, leave me cold because it's implied that they're scared BECAUSE they're black, which is just not true to life.)