Many of you are probably familiar with the Dumbo story, especially due to the 2019 release of Tim Burton’s CGI laden remake. Considering the original was made almost 80 years ago (!), I encourage you all to revisit the beautiful original animation.
The premise: there’s a new baby elephant at the circus who happens to be a little different: he’s got enormous ears! The other animals ridicule him for this and, as his mother tries to defend him, they are separated, leaving Dumbo to fend for himself. Luckily, he meets Timothy, a mouse who helps Dumbo discover he has an unusual talent.
Why is it so good?
Disney has become a household name, synonymous with high-quality family entertainment, stories of great friendships and adorable anthropomorphism (giving animals human characteristics) and the studio’s fourth feature film, Dumbo, is no exception. The traditional, hand-drawn animation is far more simple than previous Disney feature films, due to economic constraints, but it still manages to retain a high level of realism, with the animators famously bringing real elephants into the studio to study their motion for accuracy in their drawings. The trippy pink elephant scene is so memorable due to the extremely catchy song ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ and for demonstrating seamless transformation and metamorphosis, harking back to the early days of animation in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
As with many of the classic Disney animations there are universal themes and messages aplenty in Dumbo. Perhaps the most important one for me is that you should use what makes you different as your strength, a message that we all need reminding about from time to time - what makes us different, makes us great!
Considering Dumbo was made to recoup the losses from ‘Fantasia’ (1940), I believe the studio has produced a timeless classic that will have you teary-eyed and laughing in equal measures.
At a mere 64 minutes, it should be easy to find the time to watch this wonderful coming-of-age fable and, interestingly, Dumbo is the very first Disney protagonist to not speak at all in a feature film, can you think of any others?
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