Disney Rewatch: Dumbo

[osprey_archer]

The Disney rewatch continues with Dumbo! Which is kind of like a whump fic in movie form and also appears to have a different group of animators than the Snow White - Pinocchio - Fantasia track? (This was Julie’s contention; I am not familiar enough with Disney animators to have a strong opinion, although the elephant style did seem rather different than in Fantasia.)

Things I liked about this movie:
The “Little Engine that Could” reference when the engine is pulling the circus engine up the hill.
Dumbo’s little mouse friend with the bright red jacket.

Things I did not like about this movie:
It’s so sad! The whole entire movie is just one long litany of bad things happening to Dumbo! I can’t believe this is a movie that they picked to remake; I feel like it would only be sadder with a CGI Dumbo forced to dress up as a clown baby.

Although actually, now I kind of want to see the remake, if only to see what the heck they do with the whole “pink elephants” sequence where baby Dumbo and his mouse friend get super drunk, Dumbo has a lot of bizarre surreal dreams about stylized elephants, and when they wake up they’re up in a tree and that’s how they discover that Dumbo can fly.

...Probably not enough to actually watch the remake, though. I have hit my tragic baby elephant story quotient for the year.

Comments

[kore]

Supposedly (saith Wikipedia, LOL) the director was under orders to keep it "simple and inexpensive," so it looks....well, simple and inexpensive?

[osprey_archer]

I'm assuming Fantasia chewed up an enormous budget and they wanted to recoup a bit with Dumbo, or something like that. It certainly does look less expensive than Fantasia - or Bambi, for that matter, which came after.